Cursed
by OfPearlsAndShoelaces
Summary: Katniss and Peeta end their Victory Tour with a strange encounter from a mysterious fortuneteller in the Capitol. When they wake the next morning, they're not quite... themselves. This is Everlark: freaky Friday style. Canon divergent AU.
1. Chapter 1

The Presidential mansion sat alone atop the hill in the middle of the Capitol, perfectly positioned so that every resident in the city could see its imposing form from all angles. The surrounding night would have been still and silent if not for the raucous party in full swing in the mansion's vast courtyard, and in the center of it all, the star- crossed lovers of District Twelve.

The glittering lights and the loud music were headache- inducing by this point in the evening, and Katniss wanted nothing more than to go home. Peeta stood faithfully by her side, his hand wrapped around hers as it had been all night, but the wear was starting to show on him, too. It was long past midnight, their bellies were full, and their eyes were beginning to droop, but Effie had promised them only thirty more minutes at this final party and then they'd be on the train home. The Victory Tour was at an end at last, and Katniss and Peeta were nothing but grateful to be headed back to District Twelve.

A loud laugh from the partygoers echoed behind them. Katniss looked past the tables laden with food and the dance floor filled with people to see Venia and Flavius exiting a tent on the edge of the party. The pair of Katniss's prep team members tottered towards them on wobbly legs, clearly intoxicated out of their minds.

"Have you two gone to see Madame Alcina yet?" Venia slurred when she stumbled over to Katniss and Peeta.

"No, we don't really-" Katniss said.

"Oh you must go have your palms read! She's simply divine," Flavius trilled, pushing the pair towards the tent at the edge of the yard. Katniss looked to Peeta, who merely shrugged.

"Why not?" He murmured to her. "It'll kill some time, won't it?" Katniss couldn't argue with that, especially because she could spot a few more Capitol citizens making their way towards them. The hordes of party guests had hardly left the pair of them alone all night and Katniss wasn't in the mood to deal with any more of the colorful, self-possessed people than she already had. So Peeta hooked her arm through his and led her to the tent draped from top to bottom with glittering red shawls. On the outside, a sign: _Fortunes by Alcina- Discover what your future holds._

Katniss had to resist rolling her eyes. It was exactly the kind of superfluous thing that would exist in the Capitol and nowhere else in Panem, where people had no better way to spend their time or money. Besides, President Snow's cold eyes had already told her what her future was going to look like, and she doubted very much that the truth of it lay in this tent. She followed Peeta inside anyway because the alternative was no more desirable than having her future predicted by someone who couldn't have the faintest idea of what her future as a victor could possibly mean. Upon entering, they laid their eyes upon the most eccentric women they'd seen anywhere in Panem.

Katniss and Peeta were no strangers to the bizarre fashions here in the Capitol, but this woman was something else entirely. What little they could see of her natural skin was ghostly pale and the remainder of it was covered entirely in spindly, black tattoos. They curved and twisted, creating a cacophony of indistinguishable shapes and patterns upon her skin. Her hair was a fiery, unnatural shade of red. Here in the glowing candlelight it seemed to flicker like a real fire. Her eyes were dark, the pupils so enlarged in the dim lighting that it was impossible to determine their true color. There was something peculiar about the eyes, too. Something in them that was steady and solid and perceptive. The vapid self- absorption that possessed so many people in the Capitol was entirely lacking here. This woman had eyes that could see right through your very soul. "Ahh," the woman purred. "I was hoping the star- crossed lovers would find their way to my tent." Katniss and Peeta shared a raised eyebrow glance, and then turned back to the fortuneteller.

"Well, we were told that you're the best," Peeta piped up on instinct. Katniss was grateful that he chose to fill the silence. Something about this woman and this place made her mouth go dry, her tongue thick and heavy in her mouth. An uncomfortable tingle slithered up her spine.

"Have a seat," the woman said, gesturing to the two armchairs across from her spindle- legged table. The pair did as instructed, and the woman turned to Katniss first. She extended a withered hand, palm up to Katniss. "Your hand, please, dear." Katniss placed her olive- skinned hand into the woman's heavily tattooed one. Madame Alcina ran a long finger down the center, eliciting a cool shiver that zipped up Katniss's arm.

She spent a long time tracing the lines of Katniss's hand before she spoke. "There's conflict," the strange woman whispered finally. "Oohh yes, and determination, defiance. But beneath your stubborn air, your heart has always known the answer you're seeking now. Find the place where your heart and your mind come together." Katniss blinked at the woman in confusion, her trademark scowl settling into place. What on earth could that mean?

Madame Alcina turned next to Peeta. Again, she studied his palm for several minutes, running a finger down every single line and crease of his hand. "You, young man, are at war with yourself. At odds with your love and your desires. The only way to fix it is to confront it." She grabbed a shocked Katniss's hand, entangled her fingers with Peeta's, and then began gesticulating wildly in the air between the pair of them. "Your destinies are intertwined so very closely together, you may not even realize it at this moment! You need to become one! Take the path that leads to each other and never look back. Your fates are sealed within each other! Realize that potential and all will be well."

Silence hung heavy in the air when the woman finished her impassioned fortune, her pupils blown and chest heaving with excitement. Katniss and Peeta gaped at her, their hands still laced together, and at a complete loss for how to respond. Luckily for them, time was on their side, for Effie chose that moment to poke her head through the front flap of the tent.

"Katniss! Peeta! Venia said you'd gone this way; the train leaves in twenty minutes and the there are some important goodbyes you must make!" Their escort placed a stern hand on both their shoulders and promptly ushered them from the tent, but not before Peeta could glance back at the mysterious woman, whose jet black lips were quirked into a smug smirk on her tattooed face. He couldn't explain the reason for it, but her expression gave him an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach, as though the feast he'd eaten earlier had come alive and was attempting to make an escape from his belly.

The feeling stayed with Peeta as he led Katniss through the crowd of socialites and gamemakers and politicians. By the time they bid farewell to the highest-ranking officials in Panem and boarded the train, he couldn't keep it in any longer. "Do you think she was right?" he asked Katniss as soon as the door to their shared bedroom slid closed behind them.

"Do I think who was right?" Katniss asked, distracted as she went to work tugging the pins out of her elaborate braided hairstyle.

"That Madame Alcina woman. Do you think she was right about our… well, our destinies being so closely wrapped around each other and all that?"

Katniss gave a derisive snort and massaged her scalp, now freed of its updo. "Of course she was. We're engaged now, Peeta. The whole country knows that, so yes I guess you could say our destinies are _entwined_." She held up her fingers and made air quotes at the last word, rolling her eyes. "It's all mindless drivel, anyway, just like everything else in the Capitol. I wouldn't waste your time worrying too much on it."

"Yeah, but didn't you notice something… I don't know, something _different_ about her? She seemed _real_ , Katniss. Not like the preps, or even like Effie. I think she knew we've putting on an act." This gave Katniss pause as she thought it over. Yes, the woman's black eyes had given the impression that she was more intuitive than most in the Capitol, almost like President Snow in a way. Not quite in the same cold and calculating manner as he, but in a more discerningly subtle way. Then there was the fact that something about the woman had sent unusual shivers tingling down her spine from the moment they entered her tent, but Katniss had attributed that to the lateness of the hour and the awkwardness of the situation.

"I think our fates were pretty much sealed the moment I held out those berries in the arena. She probably realized that and took advantage of it to try and scare us." Katniss reasoned.

"Maybe you're right," Peeta said, though uncertainty clouded his voice.

"I am." She nodded her head as though the matter was settled. "Don't let it bother you. We have so many other things to worry about right now, as it is."

 _She has a point_ , Peeta thought, as they climbed into bed together. It was silly to worry about the fleeting words of a woman they didn't even know. Not when real dangers from real enemies lurked so clearly in the periphery of their lives. Katniss nestled herself into Peeta's side and he wrapped his arms around her, just has he had almost every night they'd spent aboard this train. Despite his troubled thoughts, his exhaustion- combined with Katniss's body heat and soothing rhythm of the train as it slipped through the night- lulled him into a dreamless sleep almost instantly.

* * *

It was Katniss who woke first the next morning, the sun a mere sliver of brightest orange on the horizon. The train compartment was still mostly blanketed in darkness, and the scenery was whipping by much too quickly to determine where in Panem they could possibly be. With a measure of sweeping relief, her first thought was that wherever they happened to be, it was certainly far from the Capitol. Also that sometime today, they would be home. Her second thought was that she needed extract herself from Peeta so she could use the bathroom. She made to gently disentangle herself from Peeta's still sleeping form, dragging back the blankets and attempting to exit the bed as quietly as possible. Then she lost her balance the second she tried to step down onto the carpet, landing on the floor with an almighty crash and an even louder yelp of shock.

The reason for her fall was explained at once when Katniss tried to pull her feet underneath her into a standing position, and she found that the left leg of her pajama pants hung flaccid and empty. The right was presently splayed out in front of her, but the left leg appeared to be missing entirely.

 _She only had one leg_.

Her arms flailed as she felt around wildly for her missing leg, her hands landing on her upper thigh and following it to the end where it tapered into nothing but smooth skin and bone just below the knee. Katniss froze, the rising panic in her chest overwhelming her as the light from the bedside lamp flicked on and Peeta leaned over the side of the bed to investigate the commotion.

"Katniss, are you alright?" Only it wasn't Peeta's concerned voice that called out to her. And it certainly wasn't Peeta's face, either.

It was _her_ voice. _Her_ face. _Her body_.

As he peered down at the fallen body on the floor, Peeta realized at the same time Katniss did that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. For he was looking down at himself, sprawled out on the floor wearing only pajama pants and noticeably missing his prosthetic leg. His eyes flew down to inspect himself still in the bed, noting the tanned, slender hands that could not possibly be his own and the raven hair fanned out across his torso. He brushed the long strands away from his chest and his hands froze on his body. Were those… _breasts_? He ventured a squeeze, and sure enough, under his palms were two plump mounds of flesh. Small, but most definitely present. He gaped at his chest in horror, his newly silver eyes meeting the blue irises of the body on the ground that- by every law of common sense and plain reason- _should_ _have_ belonged to him. Yet inexplicably, it didn't.

They held the gaze for a long time, chests heaving with panting breaths and minds racing for an explanation. This wasn't possible. It simply wasn't and yet…

"Katniss," Peeta whispered, "I think we've been cursed."

As absurd as it sounded, as absolutely, utterly impossible as it was, instinct told Katniss that Peeta was right. What other explanation could there possibly be? Still in a state of shock, Peeta climbed out of bed and grabbed the prosthetic leg propped against his nightstand. It was subsequently the weirdest sensation in the world to help Katniss put the leg onto his body from the outside. He fastened it around the stump below the knee and watched as the Capitol grade alloy melded itself seamlessly with the flesh of her (his?) leg. He pulled her to her feet and she wobbled, unused to the indescribable feeling of solid floor beneath an extremity that did not exist.

"It takes some getting used to," said Peeta.

"I don't want to get used to it. I want to fix it!" Katniss snapped. But upon seeing the look on his (her?) face, she backpedaled at once. "Peeta, I'm sorry. I just- I don't get it. Howdid this _happen_?"

"I don't know," he replied, wracking his brain for a reason, _any_ reason that would explain why he woke up in Katniss Everdeen's body this morning, and she woke up in his. If he was correct, and they were in fact cursed, someone had to have done this to them. But who? President Snow seemed the most likely candidate, but how on earth could he have managed something of this scale? And better yet without their knowledge? He was a cold, calculating, monster of a human, but still he was just a human.

"What if... what if whatever did this to us isn't… human?" Peeta supplied. Katniss merely raised her blond eyebrows. "What if the Capitol created some kind of mutt or virus and we came into contact with it unknowingly at the party last night?"

"It's possible," Katniss said, though doubt filled her voice.

"Maybe Haymitch knows something about it. He's been around the Capitol for a long time. He might be able to help us," said Peeta.

"No! We can't let anyone else know about this." There was an unmistakable ferocity in her voice that belonged to Katniss alone, regardless of the body she happened to inhabit at the time. "We have to hide this until we can find a way to reverse it!"

Peeta had opened his mouth to respond just as a sharp rapping on the door made them both nearly jump out of their skins. "Up up up!" Effie's voice trilled though the door. "We have our last big day in front us! You two will be back to District Twelve in just a few short hours!" With a mutual flood of relief, they heard the click- clacking of her heels marching away from the door.

"Look, we won't tell anyone," said, Peeta, his tone low and conspiratory. "Not yet, anyway. But for now if we don't want anyone to find out, I think the best course of action is for each of us to act as much as possible like the other. Do you think you can manage that, Katniss?"

Katniss wondered- _could_ she pretend to be Peeta Mellark? He was so much better than her already, not only at putting on the act, but also at making it believable. Between the two of them, he carried most (okay, practically all) of the weight of the star-crossed lover's ruse. His were some awfully big shoes to fill, but at the moment she couldn't see any other choice in front of her.

She had a feeling her face showed as much doubt as she felt when she gave him an affirming nod, but if it did, Peeta did not say. Instead, they gathered the clothes Cinna and Portia had chosen for the day's closing ceremonies and headed their separate ways to change. Peeta into the bathroom while Katniss remained in the bedroom.

When the bathroom door had closed behind him, Peeta hunched over the sink, locked in a staring contest with his reflection in the mirror. His long hair hung in a wild tangle around his shoulders, his grey eyes over bright with shock in the sunken purple rings surrounding them. The strange thing was, he didn't feel any different in this body, save for the fact that he had two intact feet standing on solid ground. If he closed his eyes, Peeta could have sworn up and down that he was in his own body and this was nothing more than an elegantly crafted nightmare, courtesy of the Capitol. He switched on the tap and began furiously scrubbing his face with the icy water flowing from the jet, as though he could scour away the olive skin and return it to its normal pale and freckled state. When he looked up at last, Katniss's reflection stared back at him, entirely unchanged.

With a grunt of frustration, he turned defiantly away from the mirror and grabbed the pile of clothes he was meant to wear. _I can do this_ , he thought. After all, how hard could it be to impersonate Katniss Everdeen?

Back in the bedroom, Katniss sat gingerly on the edge of the bed to remove Peeta's pajama pants, still unsteady on his prosthetic leg. How on earth had he learned to walk with this thing as smoothly as he did? Some days she forgot he even had it at all, as sure and steady was his gait. That was, until he'd take it off at bedtime with a groan of relief and her eyes would flit away from the remaining stump of his leg. The stump itself wasn't what bothered her so much as the reminder of how it had come to exist in the first place.

She wasn't brave enough to remove the underwear despite the fact that Peeta had been wearing them since yesterday; she knew they'd both worn underwear for much longer periods of time in the Games. One more day would do no harm. His jeans, however, did turn out to present a bit of a problem. Once she managed to finagle the left pant leg up the metal leg without tripping and falling flat on her face again, she found that the seam of the pants, centered as it was, rested uncomfortably against her crotch. Having had no idea _this_ was how it felt to wear pants as a man, Katniss decided she wasn't terribly fond of the sensation.

Katniss took a couple of precarious steps around the room to test the waters before coming to the conclusion that this simply wasn't going to work. Given that she had no intention of asking Peeta how he always managed this situation, she did the only thing that made sense. She dove her hand valiantly into the pants and shifted his package away from the seam and to the right. It did feel better off to the side, though it still felt strange to have something dangling there at all.

She startled when Peeta exited the bathroom and tried to look as though she hadn't just had her hand down his pants. He was fully dressed with the exception of one article of clothing clutched in his first. "I don't need this thing." He thrust the bra at Katniss and she flinched away from it as though he'd tried to hand her a venomous snake.

Interpreting his reluctance to mean that he couldn't figure out how to put it on, Katniss fought to keep the corners of her mouth from turning upwards into a smile. "Oh yes you do," she said.

"Why? It's not like… well, I mean- it's not like there's all that much _there_ to support."

She folded her arms across her new masculine chest and glared at him with narrowed eyes, but she had to admit privately that Peeta did have a point. Her breasts weren't particularly prominent, which is why all of the bras Cinna designed for her had a little additional padding in them. The extra boost was usually necessary to fill out all the pretty dresses he'd made for the Victory Tour, but she certainly wasn't going to tell Peeta that. "Because... because if you don't Haymitch and Effie and Cinna will definitely notice and they'll suspect that something is off," she said, which was true enough anyway. "Here, I'll help you. Take off the dress."

Without stopping to think of the ramifications of doing so, Peeta followed her instructions and slipped the dress over his head. Suddenly Katniss was face to face with her own bare chest; the small but proud breasts peaked with the cool air of the train compartment. "Turn around," she gulped, her mouth sapped of moisture while her face flooded with color. In the back of her mind, she wondered why the extra parts in her pants twitched at the sight.

Equally as beet red as Katniss, Peeta turned away from her to face the wall. He felt her arms encircle his waist and her hands at his back, fastening the garment. He was eternally grateful that he wasn't currently in possession of his penis when her fingers brushed his nipples as she adjusted the cups of his bra, but there was still an unfamiliar surge of electricity that jolted in the hollow valley between his legs.

The blush had not faded from either of their cheeks when they left their room to join the others for breakfast. For once they were grateful for Effie's incessant prattle about schedules and timetables, for all they had to do in response was nod and smile. Katniss thought she caught Haymitch giving the pair of them the occasional sideways glance from behind his flask. She looked away each time it happened, convinced that their mentor would see her behind Peeta's eyes if she allowed herself to make eye contact with him.

They stumbled through the rest of the day (for Katniss this was literal- damn leg) pretending to be each other.

While Katniss was prepped and ready for the cameras hours before they were to arrive in the district, Peeta gained an immediate understanding of why she always bemoaned the prep process when he was forced to sit through her beauty routine for the first time. He'd thought _he_ had it bad, but the hours Venia, Octavia, and Flavius spent slathering him in pungent goo and curling his hair and powdering every inch of exposed skin was mind-numbing to the point of torture. It went on and on and on all morning long. Luckily the preps chatted amongst themselves about the party last night as they worked on him, with Octavia notably disgruntled about the fact that she'd not had her fortune read by the Great Madame Alcina.

"I'm going to be famous in the Capitol one day," Flavius said with a wistful sigh. "Madame promised that I'd soon have my very own tribute to style."

"Oh, that's just wonderful!" Venia gushed. "She told me I'm about to find the love of my life! What about you Katniss? Katniss?"

Peeta was only startled out of his reverie when Venia's hand landed on his shoulder, momentarily having forgotten that to the prep team, he was Katniss. "I'm sorry, what did you say?" He put on his most Katniss-like expression and tried to recover from the fumble.

"What did Madame Alcina tell you about your future?" Venia hedged.

And then it hit him. Madame Alcina. The fortuneteller. _Of course_. He could have slapped himself for not realizing it sooner. He tried to cover the moment of hesitation. "Oh! She… she said Kat-Peeta and I are going to have a long and prosperous life together."

"Did she say anything about children?" Octavia pressed eagerly.

"She... hinted at that." Peeta said evasively.

"Oh can you imagine!" Octavia gushed. "Any little baby of theirs would be absolutely adorable! With his hair and her eyes…" Peeta let them carry on about the nonexistent Everlark (really, how stupid) baby that would never be, but his mind was racing. What _had_ the mysterious fortuneteller said to them last night? The hour had been so late and he had been so tired, but he squeezed his eyes shut, picturing the scene and willing his brain to remember.

Then his eyes flew open. He had to find Katniss.

* * *

A/N: Hello Hunger Games fandom, are you there? It's been so long since I've written anything, but I am so excited to finally be posting this story. It's an idea I've had on my mind for literally years but I haven't been able to bring it to fruition until now. In the past couple of years I've had some big life changes- I graduated nursing school with my Bachelor's degree and began my first real job. It's scary and exciting all at the same time. School didn't leave much time for writing, but when I finally put down the nursing textbooks, Everlark came pouring out. As you read, keep in mind this is totally for fun- it's not meant to be serious or even realistic. It kind of dives into crackfic realm, so prepare for shenanigans ahead! Let me know what you think, and as always, you can find me on tumblr as everlarkstoastbabies.


	2. Chapter 2

"Find the place where your heart and mind come together. Take the path that leads to each other. Become one," Katniss quoted.

"Your fate is sealed in within each other. Realize that potential and all will be well," finished Peeta.

Katniss's face was screwed up in concentration. "But Peeta, isn't that pretty much the same thing we've been trying to do for President Snow during this whole tour? Convince him of the whole star- crossed lovers narrative? I don't understand what more she wants from us."

"It's like you said, Katniss, that Madame Alcina woman _knows_ things. She knows we've been putting on an act this whole time. We both got a weird vibe from her. I know you felt it too."

At his words, Katniss felt a surge of shame welling up in her newly masculine body, because between the two of them _she_ was the only one putting on an act. Admittedly, somewhere in the hazy cloak of uncertainty amidst the strong arms and gentle caresses and the whispered words in their shared bed, the line between what was real and what was not real had began to blur over the past couple of weeks. Yet _she_ was the one who had failed to prove her feelings. _She_ was the terrible actress. Even though Katniss knew Peeta would never blame her, she couldn't shake the feeling that their predicament was somehow her fault. For not loving him enough. For not loving him in the right way.

"But Peeta, even if that's true, what does she have to gain by switching us in the first place?"

Peeta shrugged as though the answer was obvious. "What does anyone in the Capitol want more than anything else? Money. Power. Fame. Can you imagine how much recognition you'd get for switching the star-crossed lovers? We're two of the most famous people in the country. She'd be a legend if anyone found out."

Katniss had to admit that he was almost certainly correct in this, but they were running out of time to dwell on the matter. The train was slowing as they approached their destination. When they peered out the windows, the landscape was bleak and gray and the air hung gritty with coal dust. They were home.

As always, their hands were entwined when they stepped onto the platform to be greeted with somewhat of a lackluster fanfare from the residents of District Twelve, most of whom seemed less enthralled about the return of Katniss and Peeta and more interested in the shipment of goods the Capitol had sent as a reward for the winning district. Neither Katniss nor Peeta minded much, however. After weeks of attention it was a relief to have the focus on something other than themselves. From atop the train platform, Katniss scanned the crowd for the blond braids of her little sister, spotting them at once. Prim was making a beeline for Katniss- or the person she _thought_ was Katniss- throwing her arms around Peeta the second she reached him. It was a strangely isolating feeling for the real Katniss to see Prim hugging the life out of Peeta, knowing the affection was meant for her.

However, Katniss was soon engulfed in her own bear hug from Peeta's brothers, both of whom were larger and rather gruffer than he. "Good to see you brother," they said, ruffling her hair. She gave them a nervous smile and accepted a hug from each of Peeta's parents in turn. Another warm squeeze from the baker and a stiff, half- embrace from his mother. It dawned on Katniss how very separate Peeta seemed to be from his family. Whenever she thought about him it was usually in the context of _her_ relationship to him, but there was a whole different world to which he belonged. A world, she realized with an anxious jolt, about which she knew very little. Though Peeta's father and brothers were clearly kind people, the silence that hung in the air between all the Mellarks was awkward and weighty and seemed to stem from the cold scowl that pursed his mother's lips. Peeta never talked about them much. Katniss realized with a flash of guilt that she had never asked.

They seemed to be a quiet bunch and didn't bother asking her questions about the tour. Unlike Prim, who seemed to be peppering Peeta with so many questions that he didn't have time to respond to them all. She spotted the Hawthornes waving in the crowd, although to her everlasting relief, Gale had not made an appearance for their homecoming. Chances were that he was stuck a mile deep in the mines, which suited Katniss just fine for the moment. For some reason, Gale and Peeta did not coexist well together in her thoughts. The idea of them alone together made her stomach squirm with discomfort, though she could not rationalize why.

It was a relief to bid the Mellarks goodbye as she and Peeta were summoned by a frazzled- looking Effie to perform day's closing ceremonies. Peeta delivered the majority of their final speech, as he had done throughout the entirety of the Victory Tour. Katniss wondered whether viewers across the country would question her sudden propensity for public speaking, but they'd decided against her delivering the speech as Peeta. If he suddenly lost his charm and poise, people were bound to question that even more. As it was, Haymitch raised his eyebrows in mild suspicion when "Katniss" stepped up to the microphone in front of the district. Evidently, he decided not to push the issue because he neglected to comment on it. Or maybe, like themselves, he was just too exhausted from the trip to care anymore.

The goods were distributed to the residents of District Twelve, and Mayor Undersee finished his succinct speech of gratitude for the Capitol's generosity, as well as bidding congratulations to Katniss and Peeta for showing such bravery in winning the Hunger Games. Contrary to the Capitol, the people of Twelve didn't see Katniss and Peeta as novelties to be surrounded and idolized, so they were left much to their own devices during the celebratory dinner at the mayor's home that evening. The only person to pay them any attention was Madge, to whom Peeta spoke with ease, if a little more enthusiasm than Katniss might have.

Before long, the cameramen began to pack away their equipment and Effie bid Katniss and Peeta tearful farewells before marching back to the train. Her handkerchief was clamped tightly over her mouth to avoid breathing in any more of the coal dust permeating the air. Haymitch had vanished long ago to the solitude of his filthy home (and no doubt to the mental escape offered by his fully stocked liquor cabinet) and their families had not been invited, so Katniss and Peeta trudged alone up the street to the Victor's Village.

Walking, an activity Katniss had always taken for granted, proved difficult as she navigated the pebble-laden street on the way to the Peeta's house. It did not help that she'd been wearing the prosthetic all day and spikes of pain were shooting up her leg with every step. The discomfort must have shown on her face, because Peeta was studying her limping gait as they went. "Sore?" he asked with a sympathetic grimace.

"A little," she huffed.

"A warm bath helps," he said. Then correctly interpreting the mortified expression on her face, he added, "Or, uh, if you're not into that, then a warm rag on the end of the stump feels nice, too. I've got some in the bathroom cupboard that I like to use for that purpose."

"Thanks, I'll do that." They stopped just inside the gate to the village.

"I guess this is it," Peeta said into the silence.

"I guess so," Katniss said. Neither of them moved toward their respective homes. "Prim will probably be waiting up for you."

He nodded. "Listen, it's been a long day. Try and get some rest and we'll meet up tomorrow and we'll try and… we'll figure out a solution. Okay?"

"Okay," Katniss agreed. "I'll see you tomorrow." And though she prided herself on thriving in aloneness, it was almost unbearably lonely to part from him as she continued down the street past her house and Haymitch's to Peeta's. For the first time in two weeks, the realization hit her that she was going to have to sleep without the pillow of his warm chest and the solid protection of his arms.

Once she let herself in the front door, Katniss discovered that Peeta's house was lonely too. It seemed so large for just one person. It was the same size and layout as hers, although it was sprinkled with more personal touches. A rug at the hearth, jars of sugar and flour and spices on the kitchen counter, and decorating the walls were countless canvasses of beautiful paintings that Peeta had no doubt painted himself. However, the warmth and cheeriness of the space did nothing to quell the crushing wave of _alone_ within her. Without Peeta himself there, the place seemed strangely empty. The house, which was usually aromatic with the scent of some decadent baked good, now smelled of stale, musty air. So even though it was the dead of winter, Katniss limped through the place cracking open every window, if only to freshen the air and fill the cavernous space with sounds other than her own uneven footsteps. The whistling of a bird's wings and the occasional rustling of wind through the trees calmed her frayed nerves as she breathed in the fresh winter air.

As she made her way upstairs, it struck Katniss that she didn't even know where Peeta slept. After some searching she decided it was the bedroom on the east side of the house. It was tidy, though it looked to be the most lived- in, a contrast to the other plainly- furnished bedrooms on the upper floor. His was not the largest room in the house, nor was it the one with the adjoining bathroom, but the rising sun would stream through the window in the morning and undoubtedly it was for that reason that Peeta had picked this room for himself.

Her suspicion was confirmed when she made to open this window too, and found that it was already ajar. Peeta must have forgotten to close it when he left for the Victory Tour. She smiled to herself and went to his dresser, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror as she did so, only to find Peeta's clear blue eyes staring back at her. Even as Katniss reminded herself that Peeta wasn't there, not really, his missing presence in this space was so prominent that it was a comfort to see his face in the mirror, however strange that may be.

Before removing the prosthetic the way Peeta had shown her, she remembered his suggestion to soothe the extremity with a warm rag. There was a stack of them in the bathroom just as he'd said. And it felt incredible, once she'd freed her leg of the artificial limb and applied the soaked washcloth to the stump. She actually groaned in relief as the heat leached through her exhausted limb and seemed to relax her whole body.

Once the pain in her leg had faded to a dull throb, Katniss stripped off her shirt before climbing between the sheets of Peeta's bed in only her underwear, immeasurably pleased to discover that his pillow still held the hint of his scent. A welcome constant in this day of insanity. Katniss inhaled deeply and reveled in Peeta's musky, masculine smell. It wasn't quite as good as having Peeta and his firm chest to snuggle into, but with his scent in her nose and the whisper of his arms blanketed around her, it would have to do for now. With that thought in her mind to comfort her, Katniss drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

Katniss's prediction that Prim would be waiting up for him proved true when Peeta stepped through the front door of the Everdeen house. She was waiting on the couch with a book in her hands and her mangy yellow cat on her lap. "Katniss!" The girl beamed at him as she sat up and closed her book. The cat leapt from her lap at the unexpected movement and scampered from the room. "How was the party?"

Peeta shrugged. "Nothing special. Same as all the others, really."

"I bet you're all partied out by now. You never really liked them before," said Prim. Peeta chuckled and nodded in fervent agreement. "But you must have had _some_ good moments. What was your favorite district?"

"Four," Peeta said without thinking. He didn't know if that had been Katniss's favorite, but Effie had allowed them to watch the sun set over the water as he and Katniss walked hand in hand along the beach. For him, life didn't get any better than that.

"Your dress in District Four was so pretty," Prim sighed. "It reminded me of the ocean- almost like real moving waves in the fabric. Did you get to see the ocean? I bet it was beautiful." She cast a dreamy glance out the darkened window, where the dingy snow was still visible in the moonlight. Peeta smiled at Katniss's sister, so outwardly different than she, but the subtle similarities stood out to him after spending so much time with Katniss. The pattern and cadence of Prim's speech, for example, though Prim spoke rather more than Katniss, was exactly the same. She had some of Katniss's mannerisms as well, like her tendency to flip her braid over her shoulder and the way she toyed with her hands as they talked.

"It was amazing, Prim," Peeta told her with a wink. "Ka- I mean _I_ loved it. It was too cold to swim though."

"Maybe we can go together one day when it's warmer?" Prim said, eyes wide with wonder.

"I would love that Prim."

She beamed at him. "Do you want to stay up with me for a little while? We've got some fresh strawberries in the kitchen. I was thinking of making midnight snack."

It broke Peeta's heart to do it, eager as Prim looked, but he knew he had to deny her. Katniss's relationship with her sister was something she revered and guarded so closely that Peeta was terrified one wrong slip of his tongue would tip her off. Prim may have been a child, but she was not stupid by any means. The more time he spent with her the sooner she'd come to realize that the person in Katniss's body was not her sister. All it would take was one question from Prim or a single misplaced comment and the ruse would be over. In a way, Peeta envied Katniss going home alone to his empty house. There was no one there she had to fool.

"Maybe tomorrow, Prim, I'm so tired from the tour and the party right now. I think maybe I'll just shower and go to bed." He gave a wide yawn to prove his point. There was disappointment clouding Prim's features, but she accepted his refusal with grace, probably having learned long ago that it was pointless to argue with Katniss once she'd made her mind up about something.

Prim insisted that she at least escort him upstairs, for which Peeta was grateful, having realized that he had no idea which bedroom belonged to Katniss. He was not at all surprised when Prim led him to the smallest bedroom in the house. It was not insufficient by any means, but it was modest compared to the other rooms the Victor's Village homes had to offer. Prim gave Peeta a goodnight kiss on the cheek and he watched her bound across the hall to her own bedroom- the largest room facing the back of the house. Which, like the twin room in his own home, would not look out upon the dreary landscape of District Twelve, but the snow-capped mountains in the distance. His heart swelled for Katniss. Not only did she take the smallest room for herself, but she never failed to give Prim the best of everything she possibly could.

Once he was sure that Prim had settled into bed, he tiptoed across the hall to the Everdeen's bathroom. The air was thick with steam from the shower in no time, and Peeta kept his back turned to the mirror as he began undressing Katniss's body. That morning when he'd gotten dressed in the train's bathroom, he had tried with all his might to avert his gaze out of respect for Katniss's privacy, but he hadn't been entirely successful. The fleeting image of her pert breasts had been in his mind all day, no matter how hard he'd tried to forget them.

He stepped into the steaming shower with a groan, letting the water beat down on his exhausted body for several minutes. The spray washed away his face full of makeup and waterlogged his hair until it lay soaking and heavy on his head. After using rather more shampoo to wash Katniss's long tresses than he had ever needed for his own hair, Peeta lathered up a washcloth with the lavender-scented soap bar on the shelf.

His hands swept over his feminine body with the cloth, washing his arms first, and then gliding across his breasts and down the taut planes of his abdomen before venturing down further still. He paused when he reached the hidden junction between his thighs. He'd discovered already that Katniss was devoid of hair there, courtesy of having given the area a cursory wipe after using the bathroom earlier. It had shocked him a little at first, given that his prep team had never bothered to wax him in that particular area, and he was eternally grateful that he had not had to suffer through _that_ part of Katniss's beauty routine. Otherwise this part of a woman- of _Katniss_ \- was entirely foreign to him. Not to mention forbidden. He gave the area a gentle swipe with the soapy rag- just to test the waters- and felt an immediate jolt of electricity from somewhere deep within. It sparked his curiosity.

And he couldn't help himself.

Abandoning the washcloth, he pressed a bare finger into the juncture, finding it slick and warm and velvet soft. His knees trembled. He sank down onto the small bench in the shower, the spray rinsing the soap from his body as his exploring hand delved deeper into the sumptuous flesh between Katniss's legs.

 _This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong,_ Peeta's brain chanted. Katniss would be mortified if she could see what he was doing now. But his hand didn't seem to want to follow the cautions of his brain. His fingers mapped out the unfamiliar territory with probing interest, increasingly slick with something more substantial than water as his body relaxed into his own touch. A finger slipped inside her tight walls and an audible moan escaped his mouth. Thanks to the noise of the shower, he was fairly certain that no one outside the bathroom could have heard it, but he must remember to be quiet. He'd become so accustomed to living alone for the past few months that he didn't have to worry about any of the noise he made in his house. It would embarrass Katniss to no end if her family heard his sounds of pleasure and deduced what he was doing now.

He couldn't help but imagine how absolutely incredible this most intimate part of Katniss would feel wrapped around the cock he no longer possessed. He pumped his finger in and out of her, conjuring up the scene in his head. Himself on top of Katniss, plunging in and out of her with wild abandon as he did with his finger now. He imagined the sounds she would make. A mixture of strangled gasps and mewling whimpers filled his head and he groaned in blissful agony.

His free hand roamed his body, teasing the hard nipples of his supple breasts, fingers roaming the slick, smooth skin. His nerves were on fire and the back of his head smacked the tile wall of the shower as he threw it back with another stifled moan. He ignored the throbbing lump on the back of his head, for then another finger between his legs hit _just the right place,_ a little kernel of flesh hidden deep within his folds and the sensual shock ran through him again, even more intense than the first. He sank his teeth into his bottom lip to keep from crying out loud this time. _Oh god_. The sensation was so familiar and yet so very different from the only pleasure he knew. The kind he gave himself in the privacy of his own bed, hasty and careless and easy. This was far more complex, for with each shift of his hand, brand new sensations shot through him. Internalized as this feeling was, his whole body radiated bliss and heated anticipation for the shattering climax that was still to come. Peeta had never felt anything to equal this in his entire life.

Somewhere deep in the nether of his brain, Peeta wondered, _what if?_ What if Katniss actually wanted this from him one day? He sometimes thought- when her lips lingered on his just a moment too long during one of their public kisses, or when she clung to him as though he was her tether to life in their shared bed- that maybe she did have feelings for him in her own way. After she had demolished his heart on the train home from their first Games- after he'd had time to lick his wounds- Peeta had resolved to wait, ever so patiently, to see if whatever feelings she did have towards him would mature into something real. If it never happened and all she ever wanted was his friendship, he decided that he would take whatever she was willing to give and he'd be happy with that.

But.

 _If_ her feelings ever developed for him, _if_ Katniss ever wanted the intimacy he so desperately craved, well then, Peeta reasoned, then he would know exactly how to pleasure her body.

So it was with Katniss in mind that Peeta's finger found that heavenly little nub again, again, again. A second finger slipped inside her smooth walls and he thought only of her. The glorious image of her doing this to herself danced to the forefront of his brain. Spread eagle in her bed or on the train or in the shower, as he was now, bringing herself to the brink. One of her hands pawing at her perfect breasts, the other buried in the minefield between her legs. Her mind, her body, her pleasure. _His_ pleasure. It soared within him just then, cresting on a wave of burning heat that reached out to the tips of his fingers and toes. But it didn't stop there. There was a rhythmic pulsing between his legs, too and with it, smaller fading undulations of delicious bliss that washed over him, one after the other.

When the pulsing waves had faded to a dull, pleasant throb, Peeta sat with his hand still buried between his feminine thighs. The shower spray beating down on his sated body was notably cooler than it had been when he'd started. Guilt flooded through him, replacing his high from moments ago. His hand flew out from that forbidden place, still slick with the evidence of his arousal. He had to fight the overwhelming urge to suck his fingers clean. Instead, he stuck his hand into the spray of lukewarm water, allowing the fluid to rinse off his fingers and down the drain.

Away from the heat of the moment, his actions felt more like a violation of Katniss's privacy than anything else. Then and there, Peeta decided upon two things: first, for as long as he inhabited her body, he was _not_ going to do it again. And second, he could never, ever let Katniss find out about it.

* * *

A/N: The response to this story has been amazing! Thank you all so very much for your follows, favorites, and reviews. I appreciate every single one of you more than you could know. Until next the chapter, xoxo.


	3. Chapter 3

Katniss awoke the next morning to the rising sun in her eyes and the harsh bite of the morning winter air on her cheek. The angle of the sun told her that the hour was early, and the direction from which it came indicated that she was still in Peeta's bed, and therefore still in his body. A wave of disappointment crested over her. She wasn't sure what she had expected- to magically change back to herself overnight? Of course not. Nothing could be so simple for the star-crossed lovers. But even though she was still trapped in Peeta's body, her hunter's instincts remained intact. The longer she lay in bed the more she sensed that something was amiss. For starters, she had to pee. When she whipped back the blankets intent on making her way to the bathroom, a surprising and highly disconcerting sight greeted her.

The bulge in her underwear was straining against the fabric, taut and almost painful.

So far, Katniss had been able to consciously avoid this particular part of Peeta for the better part of the last twenty-four hours. Evidently, that streak was about to end.

It was true that she'd felt this before- sometimes pressed against her leg or her stomach while Peeta's arms cradled her on the train. She had not given it much thought at the time, and Peeta had never acknowledged it to her. When it happened he'd usually excuse himself to the bathroom. Then there was the rudimentary school lecture about the basics of human reproduction she'd had to endure last year, as well as the accidental glances at the emaciated and wounded men that often occupied her kitchen table. Aside from that, Katniss knew next to nothing about the male anatomy. So she lay in the bed contemplating the bulge, entirely unsure what to do about it. She had caught a glimpse of Peeta's… penis (her mind shuddered at just the word) yesterday during her debacle with the pants and then later on when she had used the bathroom. And the men she'd glimpsed before were starving and injured. None of them were healthy or robust or _Peeta_. Now she was faced with the fully erect thing and the concept of it was more than terrifying. It felt almost like she would be crossing some invisible line by interfering before she considered that he'd probably already seen her body in a similar state. The thought was mortifying.

Then she remembered the arena, when Peeta was starved and dying and she insisted he cover himself while she tended to his wounds. _"I don't care if you see me."_ That was what he had said to her. Clearly, he didn't have the same aversion to nudity that she did. He probably didn't think anything of her naked body anyway. So she shouldn't think anything of his. Right?

The pang of her bladder was increasingly present and she had gut feeling that she wouldn't be able to relieve herself until her current problem was rectified. As such, there was only one choice available to her. And so Katniss pulled down her underwear to face Peeta's penis in all its glory. Free of its cotton prison, it sprang forward and thwacked against her stomach. It stared at her as she took in the full sight, from the angry pink head protruding from its fold of skin down to the smattering of blond hair at the base and the testicles that so irritated her when she dressed. Something in her stomach fluttered inadvertently at the sight. She wrapped a tentative hand around the shaft and a sharp gasp escaped her throat at the contact. The skin there was silky smooth, warm, and inviting. It twitched in her hand as though to encourage her touch and her whole body clenched in anticipation. Deciding to experiment, she pulled the skin of the shaft up and down. Again. And again. And again.

And it felt _good_.

So good, in fact, that she began to forget this wasn't a natural extension of herself as the motions of her hand changed to accommodate her growing knowledge of this body. Her hand circled the shaft and tugged the skin as spikes of pleasure radiated all the way from the tip of her cock to every last corner of her body.

Some very far off, feeble part of her brain told her that she should stop what she was doing, that she'd never be able to look Peeta in the eye again after this. The problem was that this train of thinking led to thoughts of Peeta that floated lazily before her eyes, which effectively silenced her last vestiges of hesitance. His face filled her mind as she pictured the scene- Peeta in this very bed pleasuring himself. His blue eyes squeezed shut and full pink lips parted just enough for delicious moans and groans to spill forth. The image spurned a surge of warmth pooling in her groin and the speed of her hand increased. But there was almost too much friction between her calloused baker's hand and the delicate skin of her cock. Her eyes probed the room for something to lessen the friction, landing on a bottle of lotion on Peeta's bedside table. She pumped it into her hand and went back to her task. And _oh_. Her hand glided over the shaft with ease now, each movement setting her nerves on fire.

Back in her own body, she had attempted to touch herself a handful of times after hearing a couple of townie girls giggling about it one day in the locker room before gym class. After poking around down there with little success, she'd given up. It wasn't practical anyway- sex and pleasure. Not when her family's survival rested so heavily on her shoulders. Besides, sharing a bed with her little sister for most of her life tended to be a natural block to such activities.

But now Katniss reveled in her blissful solitude. She found that she couldn't stop her mind from wandering to ever more prohibited places. Places she hadn't dared let herself go near, though she'd come close many times in the dark stillness of the train compartment, where there was nothing but Peeta and every fiber of his being wrapped around every fiber of hers. Places where he had his body back and she had hers and they combined them in the most intimate of ways. Her mind raced, dizzy with images that had her writhing in his sheets. How the firm cock in her hand now would feel slipping between her own body's feminine thighs. How Peeta's muscled chest would feel pressed against her soft, naked breasts. How his mouth would feel on hers, tongues slipping together in a heated dance, those plush lips of his swallowing every single one of her breathless, panting moans.

Her free hand drifted up the planes of her abdomen, sinewy and sturdy and strong, to her nipples where she pinched and teased the little buds into stiff peaks, and then finally to her hair. Peeta's hair. The bed- mussed waves of ashy blond slid through her fingers as her other hand pumped furiously on the shaft between her legs.

Every muscle in her body was rigid with tension, her groin most of all. It felt as though each pump of her hand was building towards something wonderful, irretrievable, unavoidable. All she knew was that to stop at this point would be impossible. Then the shaft in her hand spasmed as the pool of liquid bliss in her groin became too much, spilling forth and spreading through her entire being in a wave of carnal heat and coursing pleasure. She wasn't expecting it when the physical sign of release burst forth from the tip of her cock. Katniss lay in a boneless daze, heart pounding uncontrollably as she watched the creamy white substance oozing down her fingers. Her length deflated in her hand as the force of her orgasm faded away, leaving her flaccid and sticky and too sensitive to touch any longer.

She wiped her hand clean on the sheets and didn't move again for a solid sixty seconds as her heartbeat and respiratory rate slowed back to normal. That is, until the urge to pee returned with even more intensity than before. She almost made the same mistake as she had the previous morning when she swung her legs over the side of the mattress and remembered the prosthetic leg propped against her nightstand. Strapping it into place and rolling out of bed, Katniss made her way to the bathroom, thinking as she went that she should probably change the sheets.

* * *

Three houses down, it was the quiet chink of pebbles smacking the windowpane that startled Peeta awake, his eyes flying open to stare at Katniss's ceiling. He couldn't be certain what time it was. Her bedroom window didn't face east as his did so he couldn't gauge it by the rising sun, but the sky outside was the dusky purple of early morning. He wasn't sure what had awoken him so suddenly until the next pebble hit its mark on the glass. Thinking it must be Katniss trying to get his attention outside, Peeta tossed back his covers and padded over to the windowsill.

Only it wasn't Katniss waiting for him down below. The person's face was shadowed in the half- darkness, but the hulking, black- haired figure could only be that of Gale Hawthorne. Peeta groaned inwardly.

"Hey Catnip," Gale called, holding up a burlap sack. "Wanna take a walk?" Peeta eyed the large sack nervously. He had a sinking feeling he knew what Gale really wanted to do, and if his suspicions were correct, Peeta knew he was almost certain to give himself away for the imposter that he was. But how could he refuse without arousing suspicion? His one and only goal at the moment was to embody Katniss, and she would never turn down a hunting trip.

"Sure, Gale, be right down," Peeta whisper-called back. He paced the room, the beginnings of panic rising in his chest. If there was ever a time to pull out all the stops and act as much like Katniss as possible, this was it. Gale knew her better than anyone else, with the exception of Prim and maybe even Peeta himself. He liked to think he had gotten to know Katniss pretty well by now, but hunting was an almost entirely foreign art to him. One misstep and Gale would know immediately that something was wrong.

Steeling himself for the morning he was about to endure, Peeta rushed to get ready. He yanked a hairbrush through Katniss's long tresses to tame some of the snarls and then attempted to braid the hair down the nape of his neck in her usual fashion, thanking the heavens for his years of practice braiding loaves of bread in the bakery. The hair didn't cooperate in quite the same way as a rope of sticky dough so the braid turned out a little messy, but Peeta decided it was a passable enough imitation. Then he threw on the first pair of worn jeans and threadbare sweater he fished out of her dresser drawers- sans bra this time- and stumbled down the stairs to meet Gale, who had already let himself into the house. The older boy was sitting at the kitchen table, looking comfortably at home with his long legs propped up on the table as though he did this every day. He rose to his feet when Peeta entered the room. Gale's frame towered over Katniss's body, a broad smile spreading across his face the likes of which Peeta had never seen Gale direct toward anyone else. Least of all toward Peeta himself.

"Thought you'd want to hunt after weeks on a train." He winked, handing Peeta a warm flask. His mouth was so dry he accepted the flask to avoid having to respond with more than a nervous smile and nod. Warm, bitter coffee washed down his throat as the pair began their trek down the lane of the Victor's Village. Peeta glanced behind him as they went, trying to discern any trace of movement from his own house to see if Katniss might be awake and watching from the window. The house was as still and silent as it had ever been. She must still be asleep.

The silence that hung in the air between he and Gale was thick and awkward, but perhaps it only felt that way to Peeta, a natural conversationalist. His inclination was usually to fill long stretches of silence, but Gale did not appear to be uncomfortable at all. From what little Peeta knew about him, he was a man of few words. Perhaps that was why Katniss, herself not the most loquacious of talkers, preferred his company.

Gale strolled along half a step ahead of Peeta, who was letting him lead, as he had no clue where they were eventually going to enter the woods. A few quiet miles later, they reached the edge of the Seam, where Gale crunched through the snow for at least another half of a mile until the last shabby Seam house was well out of sight before approaching the electric fence. He paused, an ear pointed toward the fence, listening. The only sound to be heard was the occasional call of a songbird and the whistling of the wind through the trees. _Damn_. Peeta had been half- hoping (okay, _all_ hoping) that the electricity would be on this morning. Alas, the odds were never in his favor. Gale lifted the bottom portion of chain link, looking at Peeta as though he expected him to go first. "Well?" He said, breaking the silence between them for the first time since they'd left the village. "You coming or what?"

"After you," Peeta said, gesturing toward the fence. Gale leveled him with a suspicious look.

"What, did the Capitol scare you off? Where's your nerve?" His voice was surprisingly gruff and Peeta puffed out his chest at the accusation.

"Not a chance. Just waiting on you." Gale's eyebrows bunched together, but he didn't say anything more on the matter, slipping his long, lanky body through the smallest of gaps under the fence with ridiculous ease. Great. Even though Katniss's body was smaller than Gale's, Peeta still struggled underneath the opening with much less grace than Gale. Thankfully, Gale's back was turned away from Peeta by the time he made it under the fence, his cool gray eyes scanning the edge of the forest, and his body motionless and alert.

Once he seemed to be satisfied with his scan of their surroundings, Gale headed for the tree line and into the forest they went. They'd walked far enough away that the fence was no longer in view when Gale opened his burlap sack and pulled out a contraption of wire and netting Peeta had never seen before, though it resembled the snares he'd learned about in his brief training before the Hunger Games. He soon realized that he was correct in his assumption. It was indeed a snare trap, meant for rabbits and other small game most likely. Peeta trailed behind Gale as he worked to secure the snares into place along the predetermined route he seemed to be taking, while occasionally coming across other, previously laid snares with prizes caught in their wires.

At one particular juncture, Gale whipped around to face Peeta. "Aren't you gonna grab your bow?" His eyes flickered to an unambiguous fallen log right beside the fresh snare he'd just laid.

"Oh! Yeah, of course." Peeta reached into the log, brushing aside dead leaves and snow until his hand made contact with the smooth, supple surface of what could only be Katniss's bow. He grabbed the quiver of arrows along with it for good measure, and tried not to look as though this was the first time he'd ever held these weapons in his life. In an attempt to be more Katniss- like, Peeta slung the sheath of arrows over his back as he'd seen her do in the arena. He could only hope he wouldn't come across a reason to use them. Gale retrieved a second bow from the hollowed log, and nocking an arrow in the bowstring with the swift ease of someone who'd had ample practice, continued on into the woods.

Peeta drew an arrow from the sheath at his back and tried to copy Gale's smooth technique, but he was sure that his grip was all wrong. He considered attempting to shoot a practice arrow into a tree, but his lack of expertise with the weapon was probably more of a giveaway than anything else. He made a mental note to ask Katniss for archery lessons later.

Lucky for Peeta, there wasn't a critter in sight at the moment. No deer or birds; not even a single rustle of dry leaves courtesy of a scampering squirrel as they made their way deeper into the woods. The farther they went the more Peeta began to relax and open his eyes to their surroundings. It really was beautiful out here, even in the winter. Especially in the winter. The sky was blanketed in soft gray clouds, but the sun peeked through every so often to lend a shimmering quality to the fallen snow, which was whiter here than any Peeta had seen falling within the district boundaries. He supposed the coal dust in the air dirtied the flakes before they ever reached the ground. Snow- covered branches lay so thickly above their heads that it was like walking through a continuous, wintery tunnel. Peeta would have very much liked to stop and paint the scene, if only he had his art supplies with him. Finally, he could see why Katniss so much preferred this place to the coal- dusted streets of District Twelve.

Too busy soaking in the beauty surrounding them and wishing whole- heartedly that could have brought his sketchbook, Peeta slammed squarely into Gale's back when the taller boy stopped walking abruptly in front of him. "Catnip, what is _with_ you today?" Gale glared at him with fierce, steely eyes.

"What are you talking about?" said Peeta, baffled as to what he could have possibly done to upset Gale this time.

"You're tramping through the woods like a wild boar! You're ruining any chance at all of us getting game. _You_ might not need pathetic little squirrels and rabbits to feed your family anymore, but _I_ still do."

"Gale, I'm sorry, I-" Peeta began, but Gale cut him off.

"A few weeks in the Capitol and it's like you're not even the same person."

If only Gale knew how very correct he was.

"I'm sorry," Peeta tried again. "It's been so long since I've been hunting and… and it feels so good to be back out here that I got lost in the moment. I didn't even realize I was doing it, I swear."

Gale's eyes drilled into Peeta, and for a split second, he was certain that the miner could see his merchant blond hair and blue eyes behind Katniss's darker Seam features. Instinctively, he shrunk back into the wool scarf tied around his neck and cast his eyes down at his traitorous feet. Apparently Katniss's muscle memory for her lithe hunter's tread didn't translate to her body when her brain was elsewhere. In the silence, Gale's gaze softened. A puff of steam issued from his mouth when he sighed, his body relaxing as the anger melted away from his face. "I know it wasn't easy for you. Having to go away to the Capitol alone like you did."

Before Peeta could retort that Katniss had hardly gone to the Capitol _alone_ , the brush of Gale's hand in his hastily braided hair halted him. Peeta's entire body stiffened as he realized what Gale was about to do.

The brusque, quiet miner was looking down at Peeta with all the tenderness in the world, the expression on his face one of foolish lust with a just touch of hesitance in his slate gray eyes. Eyes that were drifting shut as his head tilted ever so slightly downwards. It was an expression Peeta knew well. He had seen it far too many times on his own face while watching recap footage from the Hunger Games. From back when he'd stupidly thought Katniss loved him back.

Peeta was frozen in place. His feet were rooted to the spot in which he was standing, unable to move a single inch, though he desperately wanted them to. Gale was leaning closer to him, hands wrapped possessively around his shoulders, and all Peeta could do was stare wide- eyed at the approaching assault.

Their mouths met in a hard press of cold, chapped lips. Peeta's eyes remained open, for those too, seemed to be frozen. He could feel Gale's hot breath and the unshaven stubble of his chin scratching his face, but it wasn't until Gale's tongue poked its way out of his mouth to trace Peeta's bottom lip that he came to his senses and shoved the boy away from him, hard.

Gale stumbled backward, losing his footing on the uneven forest floor and smacking his back into one of the nearby tree trunks. "What the hell, Katniss?" he burst, rubbing the back of his head in an attempt to recover from the collision. Peeta's heart was pounding uncomfortably in his chest as his feet obeyed his brain at last, stepping back several feet away from Gale. He would do almost anything to convince the world that he was Katniss. He'd wear a bra, he'd suffer through her beauty regimen, and he'd even do his damndest to shoot her bow if it came to that. But he would _not_ kiss Gale Hawthorne.

He knew from personal experience that Katniss was not terribly eloquent in this type of situation, and while that had burned him personally in the past, it served him well then as he struggled to find an answer that even Katniss herself probably wouldn't know how to give. "I'm sorry, Gale, I just- don't really see you in... in that way."

Gale crossed his arms and turned away, anger settling back into every line of his stony face. He mumbled something that Peeta couldn't quite catch, but he thought it was something along the lines of, "You would have." He could only guess that Gale was referring to the fact that he and Katniss were supposed to be together, that it was what everyone had expected to happen before Katniss volunteered for the Hunger Games. Before Peeta had come into the picture. "I guess I should have known the Capitol would get to you eventually," Gale said, audibly this time. He looked down at his feet, shifting awkwardly in the cold silence between them. "We should just run away into the woods like we planned," he continued, clearly still trying to cover up the sticky moment whilst running a wistful hand through his coal black hair.

"What good would that do?" Peeta said indignantly, forgetting for the moment that he was supposed to be Katniss and not himself. "It wouldn't fix anything, or change what's happened. And you want to leave the district behind and thousands of people to suffer and starve for our choices? That's selfish, Gale. Besides, it would be playing right into the Capitol's hands. I wouldn't be surprised if Snow expects you to do exactly that."

It seemed impossible, but Gale's scowl deepened even more. "You're sounding more like _him_ every day. I guess I should have expected it after the engagement," he said, disgust dripping through every syllable. Then with his bloody sack of rabbits in tow, he turned and stomped back in the direction from which they had come, leaving Peeta to trail along behind him.

* * *

A/N: Endless thanks go out to all for your continued support of this story! Please leave a review with or thoughts, or as always come find me on tumblr as everlarkstoastbabies, xoxo


	4. Chapter 4

" _Damn it_!" Katniss swore. The heat leached through the towel she was using to protect her hand as she removed the searing hot pan from the oven. It burned her skin as she dropped the pan on the counter, employing a few more of Haymitch's favorite curse words as she did so. She ran her hand under the sink for a few seconds before examining the angry, reddened skin. It seemed unlikely to blister at least. On the other hand, she groaned at the loaf of bread she'd been attempting to bake, which was slumping pathetically in its pan. Undoubtedly, it would deflate and condense just like her first endeavor had done, yielding a flat, heavy, and altogether undesirable loaf of bread. How did Peeta make it look so easy? Every time he turned up at her house, it was with some window display- ready baked good.

For what had to be the hundredth time that day, Katniss sighed as her eyes flickered toward the window. Still no sign of Peeta. She'd found herself in his impeccably tidy kitchen two hours ago after a long morning of pacing the living room and brooding out the window, staring down the street to her house and waiting for Peeta to show up, as he'd promised he would last night.

Fearful of arousing suspicion, she'd ruled out both calling and going to her house to find him. So she shuffled back and forth in his living room, feeling like a caged animal stuck in his cavernous house. What on earth did Peeta do all day to stave off the boredom that came with living alone? Visit Haymitch? That sounded about as desirable as a trip back into the arena just about now, and therefore was not an option. Go to the bakery to see his family? She would rather face a bear in the woods than Peeta's mother in any capacity. That left what seemed to be Peeta's two solitary pastimes: painting and baking. Neither satisfied her personal preference, but she needed to keep her hands busy or they'd end up down the front of his pants again. And _that_ particular activity was definitely off the table. Painting was also out because Katniss didn't have an artistic bone in her body, but baking had seemed like something she could potentially succeed in doing.

Apparently she had been wrong.

Her first attempt at bread baking had been a failure but she'd held out hope that the second would be better. Alas, the loaf of honey wheat bread sank right before her eyes as it cooled on the counter. It looked little better than the tesserae bread she used to make with her meager rations of grain and oil. Here she was with the finest ingredients money could buy and she still couldn't manage to make a semi- decent loaf of bread. Katniss glared at the little wooden box with the label _recipes_ \- from which she'd chosen this variety of bread at random- as though the thing had betrayed her. Just as she was deliberating whether to give the bread a third attempt or toss the loaves into the garbage and pretend it never happened, a knock on the front door startled her.

 _Finally_ , she thought, irritated. _It's about damn time_. She flung the door open, intent on delivering a stern lecture to Peeta on timeliness that was befitting of Effie Trinket, but stalled when she found a rather disgruntled-looking version of herself waiting on the front steps.

Peeking out of a scarf tied around his neck, Peeta's cheeks and nose were pink with cold. His hair was tied back in a sloppy braid that looked a little worse for wear and his mouth was turned down in a scowl that, while quite unlike Peeta, was very characteristic of Katniss. Wherever he had been, Peeta had obviously had a trying morning. "Where have you been all day?" Katniss demanded.

"Hunting," Peeta shot back. "With your boyfriend."

For reasons Katniss couldn't explain, an unpleasant sensation roiled in the pit of her stomach. Her eyes narrowed. "You went hunting with _Gale_?"

"Yeah, it was a real treat," said Peeta, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I'm sorry, Katniss, he just turned up at your house this morning. How was I supposed to say no?"

Katniss looked down at her feet as she shuffled in the doorway. Her toes were freezing in the winter air. "Gale is _not_ my boyfriend."

"Does _he_ know that? Because it sure didn't hold him back."

"From what?" she said. But Peeta copied Katniss, casting his eyes down to his shoes without answering the question. The tone of her voice shifted from irritation to trepidation as she asked again, "From _what_ , Peeta?"

"From kissing me," Peeta mumbled. Every visible bit of his skin was flushed scarlet. Katniss's jaw dropped, but she had to stifle a laugh as well, torn between genuine amusement and outright horror at the thought of Gale kissing Peeta in her body.

"Did you... I mean… did you stop him?" she asked after settling her face into what she hoped was a neutral expression.

"I shoved him away. Into a tree."

Katniss snorted. "I would have done the same."

"Would you have?" Peeta leveled her with a searching look, but her eyes wouldn't meet his. The silence stretched between them, the seconds feeling more like hours as the wind whistled around them, sweeping snowflakes through the open front door.

"You didn't use my bow, did you?" Katniss said, mostly to change the subject, but visibly cringing as the thought occurred to her.

"No, thank goodness," said Peeta. "There wasn't any game around to shoot."

"Well there wouldn't have been, would there? With your feet stomping through the woods. Bet Gale loved that." Peeta opened his mouth to object, ready to answer her snide remark with one of his own, but she was smiling at him, a teasing grin firmly in place.

"No, he didn't," Peeta chuckled instead. "He was about as pleased as you were the last time I tried tagging along on your hunt."

Katniss laughed at the memory and stepped aside to allow Peeta into the foyer. Free of the bitter cold, he sniffed the warm air filtering in from the kitchen as he shed his coat and scarf. "Have you been… baking?" he asked. Now it was his turn to tease- he couldn't quite keep the mirth out of his voice.

But she stepped in front of him, blocking his line of vision into the kitchen. "I- I thought I'd give it a shot but I don't think- hey!" In a swift move he certainly wouldn't have been capable of in his own body, Peeta ducked around her and made a beeline for the kitchen. He laughed when he saw the flattened, dense loaves on the counter, surrounded by the enormous mess of flour and dirtied pots and pans she'd made of his pristine kitchen. "I tried, okay?" Katniss said, her arms crossed defensively over her chest.

"No, it's not bad at all," Peeta said. "They're really… I mean… nice effort." He couldn't keep the warm smile off his face. Katniss couldn't fathom how, even in her body, the smile he gave her seemed to melt every bit of her insides. "Want me to show you how to do it right?"

She gave a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. "Okay. There's nothing better to do, anyway."

"Exactly. Time to practice is the only way to perfect your craft. Now your first mistake," Peeta said, suddenly business-like and reaching into the cabinet above the sink for a fresh mixing bowl, "is not adding enough love." Then, in response to her exaggerated eye- roll, he said, "I'm kidding! It looks like you overworked the dough. And you probably need to let it rise a little longer before putting it in the oven. Patience is key." He showed Katniss how to combine the wet ingredients in the mixer first- water, oil, and honey- before adding in the wheat flour, yeast, salt- and though it wasn't listed in the recipe, a bit of cocoa powder. "I like to add it in for color and flavor. Especially now that I can afford it," he explained.

He was a patient teacher, and he seemed to be genuinely enjoying instructing her in something he knew so well. For a moment, Katniss pictured a chubby five- year- old Peeta learning these same skills from his father, the gentle baker playfully chiding him and laughing along as they baked together. She thought Peeta would be just as good a teacher for his own child, too. Someday.

"See, the mixer will only take you so far," Peeta was saying, sprinkling their work surface with flour and hauling the ball of dough out of the bowl. "It's better to hand kneed it from this point on. Here, put your hands in." Katniss did as he instructed and dug her floured hands into the ball of dough. Hands that were well- practiced in this particular activity, though she couldn't seem to get them to move in just the right way. "Like this," Peeta said. His small, tanned hands placed themselves on top of hers, mimicking the movements. "You want to kind of punch it with your palms and fold it back in on itself. Rotate the dough and keep rolling it out as you go. And be careful not to overwork it- because you'll end up with that if you do." He pointed to Katniss's failed loaves with a playful nudge to her hip.

Her fingers worked through the dough under his expert ministrations. She thought about how he must have spent hours upon hours perfecting this rhythm, as sure and steady was his technique. Katniss was fiercely aware of the way his body was pressed against hers, as they stood side-by-side at the countertop. Arms tangling together and their fingers mixing in the sticky dough. Then her train of thought stalled when she became aware of the burgeoning tension in her groin. _Oh no. Not now_. The same thing she'd awoken to find this morning was happening; she could feel the stiffening bulge pressed against the seam of her pants. Her heart pounded in her ears, her fingers mindlessly kneading the dough in front of her.

Peeta cleared his throat. "That's- that's enough, I think." His voice was low and a little hoarse. It echoed strangely in Katniss's ears. "Don't want to over-knead it, remember? Next step is to put it in a loaf pan and let it rise for half an hour or so. And then we'll… um, we'll bake it." Katniss nodded and sidled away from him, keeping her front facing the counter. Hoping beyond hope that he hadn't noticed anything unusual.

They were quiet for the most part as they cleaned up the mess of a kitchen and waited for the dough to rise. Katniss learned that Peeta was a bit of a neat freak as they worked together. He assigned her to washing the dishes while he dried them and put everything away in the exact location from which it had come. Right down to the spices organized alphabetically in their neat rack. Removed from close proximity to Peeta, Katniss's body seemed to relax and the tension in her groin lessened. If he noticed anything strange about her behavior, he did not say.

When Peeta declared that the bread was ready to go into the oven, he dashed into the pantry and returned with a handful of oats. "I like to sprinkle these on top before it goes in," he explained. "For texture. See, baking's not so hard, right?" And then he gave her that smile again. The one that only Peeta had the capability of giving. It made her feel slightly light- headed.

"Thanks- for, um- for teaching me," Katniss said.

"My pleasure. You know, I was kind of hoping you'd repay the favor someday- I'd like to learn how to hunt," he explained, seeing her puzzled face. "I, ah, felt kind of out of my element in the woods, today. I don't think I'll be able to get away with it a second time."

"You shouldn't have to. Sundays are Gale's only day off. He'll be in the mines the rest of the week," Katniss pointed out.

"Yeah, but what if…" Peeta didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to. At the implication, Katniss's eyes widened in horror.

"You think we'll be stuck like this for another _week_?" she said.

"I don't know," Peeta groaned, his whole body sagging against the kitchen cabinets. He sunk his head into his hands, scrubbing his fingers through his disheveled braid. "The more I think about it the more confused I get. And every time I try to think of a possible solution, I keep coming back to the same answer. There's only one thing I can think to do."

Katniss raised her eyebrows at him as dread filtered through her veins, certain that she knew what he was going to say next. They were exactly the last words she wanted to hear, but Peeta said them anyway.

"I think we need to tell Haymitch."

* * *

Predictably, their mentor was passed out cold at his kitchen table when Katniss and Peeta entered his dark, filthy cave of a home. Katniss elected to allow Peeta to wake Haymitch his way, which was rather kinder than she would have done. Not that Peeta's gentle nudging prevented Haymitch's violent reaction, but he expertly dodged the knife Haymitch swung blindly through the air before disarming the man with the skilled ease of someone who'd had ample practice. Haymitch blinked blearily up at the person who'd woken him, Peeta's outward appearance leading him to believe Katniss was to blame for his interrupted slumber. "What the hell did'ya wake me up for sweetheart?" he grumbled, his voice still thick with sleep and liquor.

"We have something important to discuss with you," Peeta said, bustling around the kitchen. He handed the knife to Katniss, who rinsed it clean in the sink and began slicing the loaf of honey wheat bread, which thanks to Peeta, had come out perfectly.

"Eat, Haymitch," she commanded, slipping a slice into his hand. Haymitch grumbled something unintelligible and dropped his head back down onto the stack of dirty plates he'd been using as a pillow until Peeta plunked a mug of steaming hot coffee in front of him.

"Sober up, this is serious," Peeta said, clearing a pile of dirty laundry off one of the chairs and taking a seat at the table. Katniss did the same.

"Bit eager today, are ya sweetheart?" Haymitch scowled and took a gulp of the coffee, promptly swearing as the scalding liquid burned his tongue. In an attempt to soothe his raw tongue, he stuffed the bread into his mouth instead.

"Katniss and I have a... a little problem," Peeta began.

"Referring to yourself in the third person? Definitely sounds like a problem to me," Haymitch said thickly around his mouthful of bread. He rolled his eyes and took another, more cautious swig of coffee.

"No, that's not- forget it. What I'm trying to say is, you remember the last party we went to in the Capitol? At Snow's mansion?" Haymitch gave a slow nod. "Well... at the end of the party we went into the fortuneteller's tent and she read our palms. It was the last thing we did that night before getting back on the train home. Everything was fine before we went to bed, but then the next morning..." Peeta trailed off and glanced to Katniss for help, uncharacteristically lost for words.

"We weren't ourselves," she finished for him. "We were... inside each other."

Haymitch recoiled in his seat. His lip curled like he was actively choking down vomit. "Hey, I never asked questions about what you two do in that room at night and I'm not askin' for details now." He raised his hands defensively. "Hell no. I did not sign up for _that_."

"No! We didn't- it's not… It's nothing like that!" Peeta could feel the heat rising in his cheeks, catching sight of his own horrified face in his peripheral vision as Katniss flushed as well. This was not going as planned. But _how_ to explain? "This is going to sound crazy, but what we're trying to say is that we switched bodies. I'm Peeta. Katniss is in my body and I'm in hers."

Haymitch was silent for a solid ten seconds before saying, "I'm not drunk enough for this."

They filled in the older man on the finer details of the situation. The exact words the fortuneteller had said to them, and how they'd been coping ever since they had woken up yesterday morning in each other's bodies. Haymitch sat quietly listening to all of it until Katniss and Peeta had explained all they could.

The silence hung weighty in the air as they waited for Haymitch to respond. Then he waggled a finger in the air between them. "Okay, let me get this straight. You've been running around pretending to be each other for the last day and a half?" Katniss and Peeta nodded simultaneously. "And you're being dead serious with me? This isn't some stupid prank? Because if it is, it's not funny." They shook their heads. Haymitch turned to look very deliberately at Peeta, his watery eyes probing his outward appearance, examining every detail of the face that should have belonged to Katniss. "What was the last thing Peeta said to me the morning before he went into the arena?" Haymitch asked.

"Get her out of there," Peeta answered without hesitation. "At all costs."

"And what did I say back?"

"Something along the lines of 'You're a foolish boy,' I believe it was," said Peeta.

"Shit." Haymitch ran a hand through his greasy hair. "I guess… I believe you. They sure as fuck don't prepare you for this when you become a mentor."

"What do we do, Haymitch?" Katniss asked, a stray note of desperation in her voice. "Help us fix this."

"Fuck if I know!" he said, throwing his hands up in the air. "Never in all my years going to the Capitol have I heard of something like this happening. And I've got twenty- four years worth of stories so twisted they'd make your hair curl."

" _Please_. You must know something. Anything we can do," Peeta said, his voice so strained it was on the verge of begging.

Haymitch scrubbed his hands over his face, thinking hard. "What did the fortune lady say to you again?"

"'Your fates are sealed within each other. Take the path that leads to each other, become one, and all will be well,'" Peeta supplied dully. He thought she saw a glimmer of something like understanding flash in Haymitch's eyes, but it was gone in a millisecond, before he could even begin to make sense of it.

"Look, if you're right and it was this fortuneteller broad then maybe you should ask her," Haymitch said with a shrug. "I guess I could get ahold of Effie. Maybe she can contact her for you."

Katniss and Peeta shared a nervous glance. "You can't tell Effie the real reason we need to talk to this woman," Katniss said. "You can't tell anyone about this. Ever."

Haymitch gave a snort so incredulous it was almost a laugh. "Trust me, sweetheart. I'm taking this one to my grave." With that he pulled a flask from his shirt pocket, poured its contents into his coffee mug, and took a deep swig.

* * *

As it turned out, Effie came through for them within a couple of hours. According to Haymitch, she'd pestered him for details in her not-so-subtle Effie way, but all he'd told her was that Katniss and Peeta needed to speak to the fortuneteller because they wanted more details about their future together. The next time they saw her, Katniss fully expected Effie to bombard them with questions about each one of her future children with Peeta, but they'd deal with that when it came to pass.

The more imminent problem happened to be on the other end of the phone line in Haymitch's kitchen, patiently awaiting her conversation with the star-crossed lovers. "Well, there ya go," Haymitch said, gesticulating awkwardly toward the phone. "I'll just... yeah. I'll just give you two a minute." He slouched out of the kitchen, leaving Katniss and Peeta in a three-way staring contest between themselves and the phone.

Seconds that felt more like hours passed before Peeta sighed and picked up the receiver, knowing full well that Katniss would remain in the stand- off for days before electing to speak first. Still, she leaned in close to him so that she could hear every word of the conversation. "M-Madame Alcina?" Peeta's shaky words came out in Katniss's voice.

"Hello, Mr. Mellark." The fortuneteller's voice curled around the words as though she spoke them through satisfied smile. Katniss and Peeta looked up at each other in matching wide- eyed glances. _She knew_. "How can I help you?"

"I think you're well aware of my reason for calling you," Peeta said diplomatically. He squared his shoulders, his voice a great deal less nervous. "Katniss and I have encountered a problem after our visit with you, and we'd like you to rectify it. Now."

The other end of the line was silent for several seconds. Katniss had just opened her mouth to demand an answer when the woman spoke once more. "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Mellark, but I'm afraid I've already told you everything I can."

"You didn't tell us anything!" Katniss burst out indignantly.

"I did, Miss Everdeen," the woman countered, her tone a mocking sing-song. "All you had to do was listen."

"But-" Peeta held a hand up to Katniss to stop her.

"We don't want to make her angry," he hissed away from the direction of the mouthpiece. He directed his next words at the infuriating woman on the other end of the phone. "Madame Alcina, you'll please excuse us. If I could be candid with you for a moment?" There was no response on the other end, which Peeta took for a _yes_. "Katniss and I were placed under a curse that night. We don't know how or why, but we know that you had something to do with it. I'll remind you that we are Victors of the Hunger Games, and therefore under the protection of the Capitol for the rest of our lives. We won't hesitate to report you-"

"I'll stop you there, Mr. Mellark," the woman interrupted. "You'll tell no one, save for your drunkard of a mentor, and all of us present here know the Capitol cares as little for you as they do for me."

She had called Peeta's bluff. And she knew it.

There was another long stretch of silence in which Katniss and Peeta seethed with anger before the fortuneteller spoke for the final time. "The reversal should come easily to a pair of lovers such as yourselves. You might even find I have done you a service. I have full confidence in you. Goodbye, Mr. Mellark. Miss Everdeen."

Then the line went dead, and Katniss and Peeta were left staring at each other in Haymitch's disheveled kitchen. More confused than ever before.


	5. Chapter 5

After the disastrous phone call with the fortuneteller and Haymitch's doubtful reassurance that they would find a solution, there was nothing left for Katniss and Peeta to do but leave their mentor to his white liquor and head back home to face another night in each other's bodies. As they made their way down the sidewalk, Katniss's mind was buzzing with the conversation they'd just had. Ultimately, it had been fruitless. Another reason for Madame Alcina to taunt them. The woman had only reiterated the same cryptic nonsense she'd said before. Katniss was just thinking that perhaps Peeta could make more sense of it when he stopped short on the sidewalk, slapping a hand to his face. "Oh, shit Katniss, I forgot."

"Forgot what?"

"It's Sunday."

"I know. That's why you got to have that nice little trip into the woods with Gale this morning," Katniss scowled.

He looked up at her, an apology in his eyes. "No, that's not what I meant. I- " he sighed. "I'm supposed to have dinner with my family tonight."

"What? No. Absolutely not." She put her hands up, shaking her head.

"Katniss-"

"Nope. I'm sorry, Peeta. I'm not an actor- you _know_ that. I've barely gotten through the last two days as it is! You're just going to have to call them and cancel."

"First of all, they're going to be expecting me anytime now and _you_ would have to be the one to call and cancel," Peeta pointed out. "Second… Katniss, I went hunting with Gale for you. I _kissed_ Gale for you." He couldn't keep the disgust out of his voice and he could swear he saw the corners of her mouth lift into the smallest hint of a smile. "I can't cancel on my family. Things are… strained enough there as it is, okay? I'm asking you to please do this one thing for me."

So it was with great reluctance that Katniss trudged down the road from the Victor's Village to the bakery in the square, lamenting all the way that while she knew Peeta fairly well by now, she'd never witnessed his interactions with his family. Except for the times she'd watched him wrestle his brother at school, and of course there was that horrible day in the rain when Peeta burned the bread and she'd heard his mother punish him for it. Aside from that, the most she had to go on was the few rushed instructions Peeta had given her as she set out for the bakery. "We don't talk about the Games, or uh… you, actually, so just avoid those topics."

"Gladly," Katniss snorted.

He smiled grimly. "Just keep the conversation light. Surface level stuff- weather, the bakery- that kind of thing. It'll be over before you know it."

It wasn't much information for her to work with.

The walk seemed to take no time at all, because Katniss was approaching the darkened bakery before the sun had fully sunk below the horizon. Upon reaching the back door, she hesitated. She'd been here many times before when she and Gale came to make their trades with the baker, but they had never stepped foot inside. She always waited outside the door on the chance that Mrs. Mellark happened to be lurking nearby. Now here she was willingly about to dine with the woman.

Peeta had told her there was no need to knock since they were expecting him. So she took in a deep breath of air to settle her nerves, and despite the " _closed"_ sign in the front window, the back door was unlocked to allow her entry into the kitchen of the bakery. It was oddly quiet here in the evening, the hustle and bustle of early morning preparation long forgotten in the dimming evening light. There was no fire in the ovens and the machinery sat still and silent, but the delicious aroma of fresh bread still lingered about the place.

It was strange- stepping directly into Peeta's world. Somehow being in this place seemed even more intimate to Katniss than roaming alone through his empty house. This was the place where he'd spent a great deal of his childhood. Probably most of his childhood. Where he'd learned to bake. Where he'd fostered his creativity into those magnificent cakes of his. Where he'd been beaten. Often, if the bruises on his body were any indication. He never spoke about them now and she had never brought it up to him. But she'd seen them- green and yellow, purple and black- back when they never spoke but she'd noticed him in the periphery of her life.

Then the sudden tread of footsteps overhead made her jump, and still unused to the proportions of Peeta's body, she knocked a metal mixing bowl off the nearest countertop where it clattered to the floor with a screeching clang. "Peeta, is that you?" a voice called from somewhere above her head. It was coming from the open door to her right, in which there was a set of stairs leading to the upper living quarters.

"Uh, yeah, sorry," she called back. "Be right up!" She replaced the mixing bowl on the counter, and took a deep, calming breath. One dinner. One dinner pretending to be Peeta was all she had to get through. And then she could go back to his empty house where there was no one she had to fool. The stairs brought her up to a small apartment, though she supposed it was quite roomy by the standards of her old house in the Seam. The cozy living area housed a well-loved couch, television, and several chairs, and gave way to the kitchen and dining space, where the table was already laid for dinner. The delicious smell of something cooking on the stove wafted under her nose and directed her attention to the broad back of Mr. Mellark facing the cooktop. He turned to Katniss with a warm smile when she reached the top of the stairs. "Hi, son. Dinner's almost ready."

Katniss swallowed in an attempt to attain some moisture in her dry throat. "Um, great, I'm starving," she managed to croak.

"Hey, Peet, how's it going?" This was Peeta's middle brother; slightly taller than Peeta, his eyes closer to gray than bright blue, though he had the same ashy blond hair as his youngest sibling. Judging by his voice, it must have been he who had called down to her in the bakery a moment ago. Katniss opened her mouth to respond before realizing with a sudden flood of shame that she didn't know his name. Nor had she bothered to ask Peeta.

Thankfully, Mr. Mellark saved her from answering. "Rye, I'm almost done here, could you grab the serving platter for me?" Rye went to rummage through the kitchen cabinets, leaving Katniss in the awkward position of not knowing what to do with herself. She tried to look comfortable in the space, as though she'd lived here all her life, but all she managed to do was look even more awkward. She fidgeted with her hands and tried to relax her tense shoulders. Should she sit on the couch? At the dining table? What if she chose the wrong seat? Nothing seemed right. But again, Mr. Mellark saved her. "Peeta, can you put this on the table? And Rye, call Will and your mother for dinner." The baker handed her a bowl of greens and a basket of rolls, which she accepted and added to the table, though she waited for the rest of the Mellarks to appear before taking her seat.

"Hey, Peeta, good of you to grace us with your presence," the oldest brother- Will, apparently- said, ruffling Katniss's hair as he took a seat at the table. The only greeting Mrs. Mellark offered her was a stiff nod in her direction. Katniss supposed that the woman's terse hug at the train station had been due more to the cameras in attendance rather than affection for her youngest son. Mr. Mellark appeared with the platter of venison steaks in his arms, which he placed in the middle of the table. It smelled incredible. Katniss couldn't remember the last time she'd had fresh venison. Probably at least a year before she'd gone into the Hunger Games. That was the last time she and Gale had managed to take one down in the woods.

"That looks delicious, Dad," Katniss said. The endearment felt foreign in her mouth and caused a slight pang for her own father to clutch her chest for a moment.

"Well, it's all thanks to you, really. The butcher hasn't had fresh game like this in ages, but the Capitol granted special shipments to all the businesses in town along with parcel day. We've got some fresh bananas and cocoa down in the bakery that I'm dying to turn into something really special." Mr. Mellark winked at her. Mrs. Mellark gave an indignant sniff, apparently disapproving of this, but she didn't say anything on the matter.

"It can't be better than all that Capitol food, though, can it, Peet? You said yourself the food is prime," said Rye, tearing off a chunk of his venison.

"Capitol food is delicious," Katniss said evenly. "But it's all very rich. After a while, you start to miss the taste of… home." She cut off a piece of her steak and her teeth sank though it like a hot knife through butter. Tender and juicy and perfectly seasoned. She wondered vaguely if Peeta's father had passed down his cooking skills along with his talents in the bakery to his youngest son.

"Yeah, we've been missing the taste of home, too," said Will, with a mischievous side-glance at Rye. "It's been ages since we had squirrel." Katniss choked on the forkful of green beans she'd just shoved into her mouth, which triggered a coughing fit. The upside to this was that it disguised the embarrassed flush on her face. Rye thumped her on the back and handed her a glass of water, which she gulped down gratefully.

"I think your days of eating squirrel might be behind you," she said, when at last she could speak. In fact, she _knew_ their days of eating squirrel were over. After tonight, she didn't think she could bear facing Peeta's family again to make the trade.

"Too bad, I kind of like it," Rye said.

"Watch your mouth!" The reprimand had come from Mrs. Mellark, breaking her determined silence up until this point. "We have a _victor_ in the family now. We don't eat vermin anymore." There was so much venom in her statement that the entire table went quiet, everybody suddenly concentrating hard on their dinner plates. No one spoke for several minutes.

But Rye seemed unable to help himself, his voice cutting through the empty sounds of knives and forks clinking against dishes. "So, Peeta, when do we get to meet your new fiancé? Officially, I mean."

Katniss chanced a glance at Mrs. Mellark to see how she'd take this statement to find the woman was staring daggers at Rye. "That will be your last mention of _her_ or you will find somewhere else to live. If your brother wants to hitch his wagon to trash there's nothing I can do to stop him. Apparently, even as a victor, that's all he's good for anyway. But I will _not_ deign to discuss it during dinner."

Rye, as well as the rest of the family, was staring determinedly away from one another while Katniss seethed in her seat. No one moved a muscle. One of her arrows could have sliced the tension in the room, palpable as it was. In fact, she wished she had her bow in her hand at this very moment with such a willing target in her crosshairs. But here and now, she was Peeta. And Peeta's best weapon was his words. "You're right, I _am_ a victor," she directed her words at Peeta's mother, her voice quaking with anger and shattering the rigid silence as four sets of bewildered eyes landed on her. "And so is Katniss. We survived the Hunger Games and made something of ourselves, which is far more than I can say for _you_." Mrs. Mellark's lips were pursed into a line so thin it seemed unlikely they would ever part again to form another hateful word. Her youngest son's audacity seemed to have shocked her into silence. "If you can't accept that, then I won't _deign_ to come here ever again," Katniss spat, ready to leave the table and flee the apartment for good when she felt a warm hand resting on her arm. She looked up to find that the hand belonged to Peeta's father, noticing as she did so that his eyes were precisely the same shade of blue as Peeta's.

"You really should bring Katniss over for dinner sometime, Peeta. She's going to be part of the family, just as you are and always will be. We would love to meet her, officially. All of us," he added, with a rather pointed look at his wife. Katniss gave a noncommittal grunt and stuffed another bite of venison into her mouth to avoid answering, while thinking privately that Peeta would have to drag her back over here bound and gagged for another family dinner.

To her everlasting relief, the rest of the dinner went smoothly enough with no more mention of Katniss. After the baker spoke his piece, it was as though equilibrium had been restored to the group. The scene with Mrs. Mellark might never have happened. So Katniss played along with small talk about the weather and bakery quotas, mostly just nodding here or agreeing there, all the while avoiding saying too much. She helped to clear the table and was just wondering how she should make her escape when Rye foiled her half-baked plan to disappear as quickly as possible. "Hey, Peeta, I found some stuff you left behind in our room when you moved out. Wondered if you wanted to take it with you?" So Katniss had no choice but to follow Rye into his bedroom while Will and Peeta's parents cleaned up in the kitchen.

The room to which he led her was larger than the room she'd shared with Prim in the Seam- although not by much- and it housed three beds. A set of bunk beds and a single bed shoved against the far wall. The lone bed held a small stack of what appeared to be dog-eared notebooks and worn folders. "It's mostly old school stuff, I think," said Rye, flopping down onto the bottom bunk, "but I though you might want to keep it, anyway."

"Um, sure, thanks," Katniss said. She sank down onto the bed and picked up the topmost notebook. At the top of the front cover written in Peeta's handwriting was _History of Panem, Grade 10._ If she remembered correctly, she'd shared this class with Peeta last year. He'd sat two rows behind her and a seat to the left. The content of the lectures had been dreadfully dull, but the classroom window had had a perfect view of the distant mountains that lay beyond the district. For that reason, it became her favorite class that year. She flipped open the notebook to see Peeta's copious notes filling the pages in neat handwriting. Scribbled in the margins of his notes on coal shortages and crop- decimating droughts were scores of little sketches and doodles. Shapeless swirls and flowers and mountain landscapes. Scenes that Katniss suspected were Peeta's own ideas for cake designs. She recognized his style from the many times Prim had dragged her over to the bakery display case in the square just to gaze longingly through the window at the beautiful, unattainable confections.

He'd clearly been honing his ability to draw people, as well. A pair of eyes here, a nose there. Faceless silhouettes and disembodied hands. One page featured a sketch of long braid trailing down a girl's back. Only the side of her roughly- sketched face was visible from the angle of the drawing, her hand cupping her chin as she stared off into the distance. Part of Katniss wondered whether this had been Peeta's view of her in that classroom. Part of her wondered why this thought sent a secret thrill shivering up her spine.

"Sorry about Mom tonight," Rye's voice snapped Katniss out of her reverie and back to the cramped bedroom. "She's been… well, you know how she reacted about the stuff you said about her and Dad during the Games, and when she saw you propose to Katniss on TV she wasn't, uh, very happy about it. To say the least."

"Did she hit you?" Katniss asked, renewed anger flaring in her chest.

"Nah, she still hasn't done that since all three of us got big enough to hit back," Rye said, waving an errant hand. "But it's been pretty damn unpleasant around here, I'll tell you that. I mean, you saw her reaction tonight. You so much as crack a smile in her vicinity and her eyes will burn a hole right through you. I don't think it's the engagement itself, but more _who_ you're engaged to. It drags up old feelings, I guess."

 _Yeah, I bet it does_ , Katniss thought. "I don't care what she thinks of me," Katniss said, honestly. "But I'm sorry if my actions have made life unpleasant for you."

"Thanks for that, but we both know it'd be unpleasant anyway." Katniss gave him a wry smile, then looked down at the notebook in her hands. She thumbed through the pages without really seeing them, hoping to avoid further questioning from Rye. But she had no such luck. "Peet? Can I ask you something?" She nodded cautiously. "I just… are you doing okay? You've been acting weird all night. And the other day too, when you got back from the tour… Is something wrong?"

Katniss curled her fingers into the pages of the notebook. "No, sorry. I'm fine. Still just recovering from the tour, I think. I didn't get much sleep the whole time and everything's been so crazy since…" she trailed off. Rye's blond eyebrows bunched together. She had clearly failed to convince him.

"I guess I just don't get it," he said. "You've gotten everything you've always wanted. Aren't you happy?"

She looked at him, straight into his earnest blue eyes. His intentions were good and he wanted to understand, she could tell. But no person who hasn't been in the arena could ever truly grasp what it meant to be a victor of the Games. Perhaps this was why Peeta chose to live alone, rather than be surrounded by people who could never understand him. "The problem is, I never wanted it like this," she sighed. Confident, for once, that she'd said exactly the same thing that Peeta would have said.

* * *

Back in the Victor's Village, Peeta lay awake in bed far too wired to sleep. Wondering how Katniss's dinner had gone while also fighting the urge to touch himself again in the dark privacy of her bed. The guilt he still harbored from doing it the first time lingered on the edges of his brain, and he'd resolved not to do it again. He'd hoped that she would have come to find him once his family dinner was over, but she had not made an appearance. And so it was that he found himself sitting in the Everdeen's kitchen well after Prim and Mrs. Everdeen had gone to bed, his absentminded hand stroking Buttercup as the cat purred with delight. The full moon was almost blindingly bright in the inky sky as Peeta stared blankly out the kitchen window, his mind ruminating on what the fortuneteller had told them earlier. He still couldn't make any sense of it.

"Are you two finally friends, then?"

Peeta jumped about a mile out of his seat, and turned to find Prim standing in the darkened doorway to the kitchen, her face lit by the glow of the moon. She must move quietly as a shadow, just like Katniss. "I could have sworn that cat was just one hiss away from you adding him to our stew on any given night."

"We're making up," Peeta lied vaguely, wondering how on earth Katniss had come to have a beef with a cat of all things. "What are you doing awake?"

Prim shrugged. "Couldn't sleep." She entered the kitchen fully then, her feet indeed moving with the feline grace of her older sister. Peeta hadn't noticed it the other day. "Actually, it's started to become a habit of mine to come down here at night when I can't sleep, ever since you've been gone and I can't crawl into bed with you anymore."

Peeta's heart sank. He knew what it felt like to need someone next to him at night when the nightmares hit. "I'm sorry, Prim," he whispered.

"Katniss, it's not your fault. Not even a little bit," Prim said, waiving an airy hand as though to brush his apology aside. "Do you want some hot tea, maybe? That's what usually helps get me back to sleep." Peeta nodded and the two fell silent while Prim bustled around the kitchen, making tea.

"I saw you leaving the house with Gale this morning," said Prim abruptly.

"He wanted to go hunting."

"You didn't come back with him."

"No, I didn't."

Prim's eyes met Peeta's in a quiet, searching look. "Did he kiss you?"

Peeta nodded. Prim sighed. "I thought he might. He was wound pretty tight during your victory tour. Every time we watched mandatory viewing with the Hawthornes' he ground his teeth so loud that I'm shocked he has any teeth left at all. I'm pretty sure he made himself go half-crazy waiting for you to get back. What did you do to him when he kissed you? Slap him across the face?"

"I shoved him into a tree," Peeta admitted, somewhat sheepishly. But Prim doubled over laughing, and the sound of it was so infectious that Peeta couldn't help but join in with her.

"Gale will never learn, will he?" Prim said, wiping tears from her eyes and padding across the kitchen to join Peeta where he sat at the windowsill, two steaming mugs of tea in hand. "Honestly I'm not surprised you reacted that way, Katniss. I'm sorry, but you've always been terrible at expressing physical intimacy. I'm surprised you even let Peeta touch you as often as you do."

All traces of laughter disappeared from Peeta's face at once. "It's only for the cameras," he mumbled, accepting the mug of tea from Prim's outstretched hand.

"Is it?" Prim said, her blond eyebrows scrunching up her forehead. "Because to be completely honest, Katniss, I've always thought you look kind of... stiff on television. It's only when there's no cameras around that... well I've just noticed you're different then. That's all."

"What do you mean by that?" Peeta paused in the middle of sipping from the mug, genuinely baffled. And how had he missed whatever it was Prim was referring to? The part of him that was desperate for Katniss to reciprocate his feelings for her couldn't have been blind to something so blatant that even Prim could see it. Could it?

"I shouldn't have said anything," Prim hedged, leaning back onto her heels before approaching Peeta slowly, as if not to spook him away, and perching in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. "It's just little things. Like you gravitate toward each other without realizing it. If his body shifts one way or the other, so does yours. He has this habit of tucking your hair behind your ear when it comes loose from your braid. And the strangest thing is you let him do it. I remember I was shocked the first time I saw that, but you let him do it without even flinching. I don't even think you notice it half the time."

"Maybe it's just because we're used to each other," Peeta offered.

"Maybe," she shrugged. "But you've known Gale for longer than Peeta and you've never let him touch you like that. I think Peeta brings out a different side of you. Maybe one that you buried a long time ago because you had to, for your sake and mine and Mom's. One that's okay with being vulnerable and intimate. Even if it is just in small ways."

The moonlight reflected off Prim's blond braids and porcelain skin, bathing her in an ethereal glow as Peeta stared at her in disbelief. "She doesn't give you enough credit," he said, more to himself than to her.

Prim cocked her head to the side, confused. "Who are you talking about, Katniss?"

He backtracked at once. "I'm sorry, I just meant... you've grown up so much, Prim. I think sometimes I still see you as a little girl, but now you're smarter than me when it comes to certain things."

Prim grinned mischievously. "I think you just might be right about that. It's good to have you home." Then she hugged the life out of Peeta where he still sat curled up on the windowsill. He hugged her back, but his mind was somewhere else entirely, racing with renewed theories.

Prim had given him an idea.

* * *

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! This story has been so much fun to write, and I can't wait to post the next chapter. Please leave a review with your thoughts/theories! Until next time, xoxo.


	6. Chapter 6

Peeta didn't venture out to find Katniss until Prim had gone back to bed, and even then he strained his ears for the slightest creak of wood beneath her feather-light tread before deciding the coast was clear. He crept out the front door and tiptoed down the path, praying for just an ounce of Katniss's stealth and grace. He made it down the walkway with not a Peacekeeper in sight before sprinting across the lawns of the empty homes in the village, as well as that of Haymitch's brightly lit house. The hour was so late he could only hope the old man was too deep in a bottle of white liquor to bother paying attention to what was going on outside his windows.

Breathless and heart bounding with adrenaline, Peeta made it to his house in record time, ready to burst through the door. But something stopped him. He had been in such a hurry to get there that he hadn't stopped to think of the consequences of his discovery, not to mention what would happen if his plan failed. It would be bad, to say the least. It was almost certain to ruin the friendship he'd carefully cultivated with Katniss on the Victory Tour. But then, that was likely to happen anyway, whether his idea worked or not. The knowledge cleared his head enough to knock on the door, though Peeta couldn't shake the feeling that he was heading for the gallows. His heart was still pounding so hard he wouldn't be surprised if it beat itself right out of his chest.

No answer came from the other side of the door, not even the slightest rustle of movement inside the house. Well, it _was_ late. Katniss was probably asleep already. Just as he was turning away and thinking he should wait until tomorrow, the door cracked open. "Peeta! You nearly scared me to death!" Katniss's tone held a touch of anger, but mostly relief. She opened the door wider to allow him entry. "What are you doing here?"

"You couldn't sleep either?" Peeta said by way of greeting, noting as he walked into the house and perched on the couch in his living room that she was still fully dressed, though her eyes were rather bloodshot. She shook her head as she folded her legs underneath her to face him on the couch, her knees grazing his as she did so. "That makes three of us then," said Peeta. When Katniss raised her eyebrows in question, he clarified, "Prim. It seems as though she's not sleeping much these days either. She found me in your kitchen just now."

"Does she know?" Katniss gasped. Unmistakable worry clutched at her voice, but Peeta shook his head.

"No, we just had a little chat, that's all. She's... a lot smarter than you give her credit for, you know."

Katniss nodded, a wistful smile on her face. "I know she is." They fell silent for a few moments. Katniss didn't ask why he was there and Peeta didn't volunteer the information. Maybe his presence didn't even need to be explained. The air between them seemed to be palpably charged, electric particles buzzing about them as they sat face- to- face in Peeta's living room. It was as if they both knew their situation was about to come to a head. Soon. But Peeta wasn't ready to clue her in just yet. He needed to ease Katniss into it, so said something else that had been on his mind anyway.

"You never told me- how dinner went."

"You came over here after midnight to ask me about dinner," Katniss deadpanned. Peeta nodded, to which she rolled her eyes. "Well, for starters your mother hates me."

"She hates me too," said Peeta, with a self-deprecating shrug. "It's been like that for as long as I can remember."

"No, she _really_ hates me. She said I'm trash and you're no good for being with me."

"She said _what_?" Peeta fumed. He had half a mind to march down to the bakery that instant, late hour be damned, to tell his mother exactly what he thought of her.

"Your brother says she's not happy about the engagement," said Katniss, picking at her fingernails. "I guess she doesn't realize it's not…. entirely real."

"Oh, I suppose I should have expected that," said Peeta, deflating a bit. His mother had been nothing short of displeased with the strategy he'd employed to save Katniss- and by extension himself- from the Games. Seam and merchant divides ran deep in District Twelve and his mother had always kept firmly to that code. As a result, her youngest son's relationship with Katniss Everdeen was a sore subject in the household. He'd thought it better to not complicate an already dicey situation by telling his family it had all been a farce for television. So like the rest of the country, Peeta let them believe that he and Katniss were madly in love. "In any case, I'm sorry for putting you through that."

Katniss smiled wanly. "I did owe you- for the hunting trip this morning. Now we're even."

"So I take it you're not keen to attend another Mellark family dinner?"

Her glare could have pierced through his very soul. "You'll have to drag me there unconscious and in a body bag."

Peeta laughed. "Or I could bribe you with baked goods." He nudged her shoulder. "You'd do it for cheese buns."

"Nope. Not even then," she said stubbornly.

"You would and you know it. Your resolve weakens in the face of food," Peeta teased, his hand reaching for the soft flesh of her side, in the spot where he knew his body was the most ticklish. She shrieked and tried to dodge him, but he was too quick for her. He fell on top of her on the couch, his fingers probing for more sensitive skin.

"Okay, okay, maybe for cheese buns," Katniss conceded, breathless with laughter. She grabbed his hands and wrenched them off her sides, but their chests were smashed together, heaving with their panting breaths. Their eyes found each other as all traces of laughter faded from their faces. Katniss's pupils were blown, her lips parted as she tried to catch her breath. And then before her brain could catch up with the actions of her body, she did the unthinkable: she titled her head up to kiss Peeta.

Her lips met his met in a cautious embrace. It was just as they had done a thousand times before, and yet it was not. This was the first time when there were no cameras to capture the moment. The first time when one of them did not have to pull away from the other with a coy, embarrassed glance to a watching audience. But Peeta did anyway, after several long seconds, because he couldn't let this go any farther without an explanation.

"I'm sorry," Katniss said the instant Peeta pulled away from her, casting her eyes away from his. "I don't know what made me-"

But Peeta hushed her with a finger to her lips. "Katniss, I've been thinking… about that phone conversation this afternoon."

She groaned, sinking her face in her hands. "I've been thinking about it too. That's why I haven't gotten any sleep- I have no idea what we have to do."

Of course she wouldn't have figured it out, Peeta thought. It was like Prim had said, only an hour before. Katniss, while so attuned to her prey and the ways of nature, was oblivious to the intricacies of human interaction. It was funny- how incredibly pure she was. The girl who had risked her life for his- _killed_ for him- but still wouldn't look at him naked in the arena. Who kept her hands chastely above his waist at all times, and didn't understand the effect she had on him as they laid together at night. That innocence was one of the many things Peeta loved so much about her. It saddened him that he was going to have to ruin that tonight.

"Well… I have an idea," he confessed.

"You do? Tell me, Peeta. I'll try anything." He seriously doubted that, but she did say _anything_. The words for which he was searching would not come, but he caught her gaze with his own, holding her trapped there. Confusion flitted across her face, but she did not look away. The solution was there, plain as day before her. All he needed to do was make her see it. So Peeta leaned forward, just as Gale had done to him that morning, but slowly. Much more slowly, giving Katniss every opportunity to duck away as he studied her for any signs of panic or reservation. There were none.

His eyes fluttered closed at the last second. So did hers. She allowed the kiss.

Much like their first kiss that evening, this kiss was comforting and familiar, though neither felt compelled to break it. They sank deeper into it, lips moving in a pattern together that felt as natural as breathing, though at once sparking something new and unexplored between them. Katniss felt that hunger- the kind she'd only felt once before in that dank cave of the arena. The fact that she was kissing her own lips didn't register in her mind. Because it was Peeta behind every move- behind every touch. Just as she'd felt the stirring in her groin that morning on the train when she'd brushed her hand against his breasts, and again back in the kitchen when they'd baked bread together, she felt it now. Though it was intensified a hundred times more. Her large, calloused hands reached for his slender face, pulling him closer still, desperate for this newfound feeling to continue.

They did not part until Peeta, having felt the rush of desire in his own feminine body, pulled away from the kiss first. He pressed his forehead to hers, both of them gasping for breath in the otherwise silent room. Katniss's lips moved instinctively back to his, but he spoke before she could claim them.

"Katniss, I think I know what we need to do," Peeta whispered in between deep gulps of air. "I think you know, too." Her only response was to furrow her eyebrows in puzzlement. In answer, he pulled her into another kiss, this time tracing her bottom lip with his tongue, licking his way into her mouth as she allowed him entry. One hand found the back of her head; the other toyed with the hem of her shirt and began making its way up the solid planes of her abdomen. He could sense a trace of hesitation in the way her muscles clenched under the ghost of his touch, and sure enough, she broke the kiss.

Her hooded eyes searched his face for the answer, widening considerably when the pieces clicked into place. She shook her head. "Peeta, I don't think-"

"What could possibly be more bonding than physical intimacy, Katniss? Madame Alcina even said it herself; the solution should come easily to a pair of lovers. What better way to become one than to, well... become one?"

She looked vaguely horrified. "That- that can't be what we need to do."

Peeta raised his eyebrows. "Katniss, this is the Capitol we're talking about. I think it's exactly what we need to do."

"How can you be sure?" she challenged him. "How do we know for certain if we do this it will switch us back to normal?"

"I don't," he admitted. "Maybe it won't. But it's the only thing I can think to do. If you need some time to think it over-"

"We don't have time!" The shrill note of panic was back in Katniss's voice now. She put her face in her hands, defeated. "I'm sorry, Peeta, I know you're just trying to help."

Peeta nodded. "You know, if I'm being honest with you, I can't stop wondering... what it would be like. We're never going to find ourselves in this situation again. And, well... aren't you curious? Just a little bit?"

He stared at him, aghast. Appalled and terrified that _this_ was the only solution available to them. But then… from the back of her mind came the frenzied moments she'd stolen in Peeta's bed just that morning. It felt like a lifetime ago. At the time she'd wondered what it would be like to kiss Peeta in this body. Never could she have imagined that less than twenty- four hours later she would have a definitive answer to that rhetorical question. Nor that she'd want more. Her body (or was it still his- she didn't know anymore) was screaming for her to say yes, to lean forward and pick up where they'd left off. But something held her in place, frozen on the couch.

Peeta searched the conflicting expressions crossing her face as she muddled through the dilemma he'd placed before her. He'd learned so much about Katniss over the last few months and weeks and days- more than he'd ever dreamt of knowing. He knew her well enough to read her even when she wasn't in her own body. And he knew that she was more curious than she would ever admit. "You know I'd never force you to do anything you're not comfortable with, right?" he said.

She swallowed drily. "I know."

"I'd make it good for you."

"I know."

"I'd take it as slowly as you want." Peeta reached up to stroke her face, trailing his thin fingers over her swollen lips. "We have the whole night if that's what it takes."

Katniss's nerves were on edge and her desire was more than kindled. She wanted him. The growing bulge in her lap was telling her so. Partly because she didn't have the words for which Peeta was asking, and partly because she wanted to do it again, Katniss leaned forward to kiss him. Peeta met her lips eagerly, swallowing her moan as he did.

"Let's find out how good it can be," he murmured against her mouth.

"Okay," she whispered, her breath fanning across his face.

"You'll allow it?"

"I'll allow it."

After a moment's hesitation, she took the hand he extended to her. They made their way to his bedroom, where the bedcovers still lay rumpled from Katniss's morning activities. Peeta placed his hands on her shoulders and guided her to the edge of his bed until the backs of her knees hit the mattress. "Sit," he commanded. She obeyed. "Have you ever had an orgasm before, Katniss?"

She coughed, looking determinedly away from him. Refused to meet his eyes, lest he discover her secret. _Orgasm_. That was the word that wouldn't come to her earlier that day. That indescribable sensation. The culmination of the act she'd performed just that morning in his body. No doubt it was what Peeta intended to do for her now. The words sounded strangled when she managed to choke out an answer. "Uh, just once, I think."

Peeta nodded and sank to his knees in front of the bed, reaching for the button on her jeans and scrutinizing her face for any visual cues. She nodded her head to indicate that he should continue. So he pulled down the jeans and underwear to find himself face- to-face with his own partially erect cock. This particular piece of anatomy had been a part of him his entire life, but he'd never been quite so intimately close to it before as it jutted out before him. Luckily for Katniss, he knew exactly how this part of him liked to be touched. Peeta intended to use that knowledge to his full advantage. He'd meant what he said earlier- he was going to show her how good it could be.

She jumped when his mouth descended on her and began laving his tongue over the bulbous head of her cock, but she quickly gave in to Peeta's insistent attentions, falling back onto her elbows with a throaty grunt. The length of it felt thick and heavy in Peeta's mouth, and it was impossible to put to words how utterly bizarre it felt to perform this act. But the knowledge that Katniss was on the receiving end was enough to push the thought from his mind and focus solely on her. He busied one hand with her shaft, stroking gently up and down as the length grew firmer in his grasp. The other hand reached down to fondle her sac, followed by a groan of approval from Katniss.

Guided by her grunts and moans, he increased the speed of his hands as he went, swirling his tongue over the tip, plunging his mouth down on occasion to take in as much as he could. "Oh, god, Peeta," Katniss panted in between deep, heaving breaths. He made an encouraging moan around her cock and the vibrations sent her flat on her back, hands fisted in the blankets as Peeta suckled and pumped her shaft in perfect harmony. It felt very much like the pleasure she'd given herself in this very bed earlier, though amplified a thousand times over. The wet heat of his mouth, the smooth ministrations of his tongue, the well- versed motions of his hands were bringing her to a precipice of which she'd never been. It was enough to make her forget that this was all so very backwards and confusing. Her body was warm all over, tingling with anticipation as the sensation deepened, and at the very center of it was Peeta and his eager tongue.

With a final tug of his lips, the pleasure snapped inside of her, thundering through her body and filling every crevice with delicious bliss. The guttural cry emanated from the back of her throat before she could stop it, but she couldn't find it in herself to care if anyone heard. Peeta kept his mouth around her the whole time, dutifully swallowing the bitter fluid that spilled from her tip as she trembled with lingering aftershocks. Only when her length began to soften did he take his mouth away from her.

"Wow," she gasped, still sprawled out on her back. "That- that was… wow."

"I know," said Peeta, flopping down onto the bed beside her.

Katniss sat up so quickly that a rush of dizziness consumed her for a moment. "Has someone done that for you before?" She didn't know why she felt entitled to an answer. Why it mattered. Why she even cared. But she let out a relieved sigh when Peeta shook his head.

"No, but I do have some idea… what pleasure feels like in that body. There's nothing else like it in the world." Well, he was right about that. Katniss felt like she could lie in that spot for the rest of the night, sated and spent as she was. Then the weight of Peeta on the mattress next to her reminded her that they weren't yet finished. Because to become one in the Capitol surely meant to give everything of yourself to another person. All she had done so far was take.

"What do we do next?" she asked him, her heart quickening again at the prospect of _more_ tonight.

Peeta raised his eyebrows. "Well, first you're going to need some time to recover," he said, a devilish smile curling his lips. "And we're both a little overdressed, don't you think?" He gestured toward their almost fully clothed bodies.

In answer, Katniss sat up and whipped her t-shirt over her head. Peeta followed her lead, his suddenly uncovered nipples puckering in the chilly air that swept in from his open bedroom window. She gave him an appraising look and nodded toward his naked chest. "Still couldn't figure out the bra, huh?"

"It's an unnecessary garment," Peeta grumbled. "I have no idea how you put up with that thing on a daily basis."

"I don't, mostly." She hadn't meant the words to be sexy, but the thought of Katniss Everdeen walking around braless sent an unwilling flood of moisture to the juncture of his thighs. If he'd had his dick back, he'd be hard as a rock. Peeta shifted uncomfortably, fighting the sudden, intense need to stuff his hand between his legs and rub himself raw. Katniss seemed to sense his need to be touched, for her hand reached for him. "Can I?" she asked. He nodded. Her hand made contact with his breast, fingers kneading and pinching and pulling his aching nipples. Peeta wiggled out of his pants and underwear- the only remaining clothing between them- as her tongue joined her fingers in their exploration. When the wet heat of her mouth closed around his nipple, Peeta could have come right then and there if his shock hadn't overtaken him first. As it was, his fingers raked through her hair and held her to his chest, arching into her mouth and begging her not to stop.

Her tongue drifted across his chest to pay equal attention to his other side before she kissed a wet, sloppy trail up to his eager and waiting lips. Peeta sank back into his pillows, pulling Katniss on top of him as he went. Her weight pushed him into the mattress, and her cock- stiffening once again- was trapped between their stomachs, causing the hollow ache between his legs to intensify. More out of instinct than anything else, she began to thrust her hips into his stomach and landed in the moist heat between his legs. She rocked back and forth, coating herself in his arousal. A groan slid out of her mouth and Peeta caught it in the back of his throat between their clumsy, searching kisses. Their tongues moved in a frantic dance in his mouth, Katniss's hips thrusting between his legs with ever- increasing desperation. She was not quite there. But almost.

"It might hurt." There was a note of apology in her voice.

"It's okay," he said. If anything, he was glad he could take this pain away from her. Glad that he was her first. That she was his.

Katniss was right. It did hurt. But Peeta found himself coaxing her through it as she swathed herself inside of him, inch by inch. "That's right, Katniss. Right there. Slowly now. You can do it- ah."

The burning sensation that seared through him took his breath away. But there was her voice in his ear, all Katniss behind the masculine tone. Reassuring him this time. "Relax, Peeta," she breathed. At her words, he took a deep breath of fresh night air into his body, releasing the tension in his clenched muscles. With it, a fraction of the pain released itself as well. He snaked his hand where they were joined, targeting the fleshy bundle of nerves with which he'd become well acquainted. Katniss watched his face as he drew tight circles around the area, his discomfort melting away into an expression she'd never seen on her own face before.

"Katniss," Peeta gasped, " _Move_." She obeyed, her momentary distraction giving way to the more pressing urge to drive herself into him as far as she could go. Their hips met with the slap of naked skin as she filled him to the hilt. He gasped again, more pleasure than pain, she thought, as she drew out and back again. She could feel it already, the beginning of the end. Her arms trembled with the strain of keeping herself poised above him, hips unwilling to stop moving after that first thrust. The feeling was incredible. All pressing heat and snug walls pulling her back, back, back for more. She wouldn't last long wrapped in the velvet warmth of him, but instinct told her they had to finish this together.

Peeta seemed to be thinking the same. He drew her face down to his, pressing their naked chests flush with one another, driving his hips up to meet her erratic thrusts. Her length filled the hollow emptiness he'd felt earlier, the pain all but forgotten as she reached places within him he'd had no idea even existed. Their lips met in a sloppy, frenzied embrace. She was close, he could tell, but so was he. Tendrils of bliss flooded through him, stemming from his fingers and the place she occupied, all connected in a vast web of burning pleasure.

"Peeta, I don't know how much longer I-"

"It's okay," he whispered against her mouth. "Let go. I'll meet you there." Strange as it was, his permission was the only thing she needed. One last thrust was all she could manage before the ecstasy burst within her again, flooding through her veins and trembling limbs. She could feel Peeta's walls squeezing her length, and knew he had joined her just as he said he would. Sure enough, Peeta's eyes were closed as he rode the waves of bliss and pulsed around her, heat spreading throughout his entire body, ebbing and flowing in harmony with their mingled gasps and moans.

But when he opened his eyes, he found that instead of his position underneath her, he was above Katniss, gazing down at her face still pinched in elation. The real Katniss, with her wild hair and smoky eyes and perfect, naked breasts.

He was still inside of her. And he was still rock hard.

A low, guttural moan escaped her throat when Katniss felt him thrust inside of her. How the sensation felt more perfect than it had moments ago, she did not know. But then Peeta thrust again. And again. And she ceased to remember anything that resided outside their tangle of limbs and lips and primal, scorching need. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head when his mouth found the hollow at the base of her neck, worrying the skin there between his teeth. Katniss had never been so glad to be back in her own body. Then his thrusts slowed to a maddeningly languid pace, as though Peeta had cleared his head enough to realize that this could be his only chance to do this. If it was, dammit, he'd do it right.

So he punctuated every thrust with a kiss. To her neck, her lips, her breasts- anywhere and everywhere he could reach. Katniss found herself arching into his body, pulling him still further, deeper into her. When it happened again it was unexpected and hit her like a freight train. The wave of euphoria crested over her, the spasms of her walls pulling Peeta under with her.

He had been wrong earlier, Peeta realized, as he saw stars behind his eyelids. Because _this_ was what true pleasure felt like in his body. Nothing he'd ever done with his own hand could ever compare. It seemed to go on forever and left him thoroughly exhausted, his arms failing him as he sank into the mattress. Into Katniss. She didn't seem to mind. In fact, once his softening, spent cock finally slipped out of her, she curled into his chest. Buried her face in his neck, just as she had all those nights on the train. He accepted her gladly, gathering her into his arms. Neither of them spoke into the quiet stillness of the night. Neither seemed to possess the right combination of words to describe what had just happened, so they lay together in silence. But a single, mutual thought rang irrevocably in the air between them: _It worked_.

* * *

A/N: As I was planning out this story it became evident to me that the only way for Katniss and Peeta to come together and switch themselves back would be to well... come together. I've been a little hesitant to post this chapter because it's a little out there, to say the least. But let me know if you though it was weird or sexy (or maybe weirdly sexy?) in the reviews. One more chapter to go. Thanks so much for reading! xoxo


	7. Chapter 7

It was the first rays of light creeping over the horizon that woke Peeta the next morning. In his sleep- drugged haze, it took him a moment to realize that he was back in his own bed. And also that he was not alone. The familiar sensation of Katniss snuggled into his side with her long, dark hair spilling over his chest overwhelmed him as the memories flooded through him. Last night had not been some insane, hyper- realistic dream. Last night was real. Even though Peeta could see the evidence in bed next to him, he still ran his disbelieving hand through his hair, down his flat chest, and to the seam of his leg where flesh met metal. The motion stirred Katniss against him. When she opened her eyes, she looked momentarily confused to find herself in his bed. Back in her own body, and naked besides. "Morning," murmured Peeta. His hand reached automatically for her, intending to stroke her hair.

He regretted the action instantly because she pulled away from him before he could touch her, clutching the sheets to her chest. "Morning," she mumbled. Her cheeks were flushed pink, hair mussed, and lips still swollen from having been thoroughly kissed last night. Peeta had never seen her look more beautiful. He was grateful for the covers bunched over his crotch, because he was beginning to feel the distinctly male experience of arousal again. Silence was thick in the air as the awkwardness forced itself between them like a weight.

"I should get home," Katniss said eventually. "Mom and Prim will be wondering…" her sentence trailed off and Peeta nodded his head fervently, grasping at the excuse.

"Yeah, of course! Uh- I'll be in the bathroom. Give you some privacy." There was no means of leaving the bed without revealing the fact that he was just as naked as she. Not like it mattered. She'd seen it all, anyway. He scooped up his jeans from the floor to at least conceal his front from her as he padded over to the bathroom. Once the door was closed behind him, he took a long moment to study his face in the mirror above the sink. _His_ face. Finally. Unchanged and yet somehow so foreign from this perspective.

He took his time using the bathroom and brushing his teeth, awash in relief to be back as himself. Though something troubling lingered in the back of his mind, and it took Peeta a few moments to realize what was perturbing him. As happy as he was, there was a part of him that also felt a little… lacking. Like he'd lost something precious.

The only clothing he had with him in the bathroom was the pair of jeans he'd grabbed from the floor, so he pulled them on sans underwear. Thinking that he had avoided Katniss long enough- and that maybe he should offer to make her breakfast before she left- Peeta went back to his bedroom. To his immense dismay, he found that it was empty. Katniss was gone. Before he could ponder the notion that perhaps she'd just gone downstairs, he glanced out the window in time to see her slight figure retreating down the sidewalk. It was a predictable move for her (and admittedly one that he should have seen coming) but that didn't make it hurt any less. The sight of his deserted bed- with its disheveled covers and lingering scent of sex- left a hollow pang in his chest. To Peeta, this unceremonious departure was a sign that it was back to the status quo as far as he and Katniss were concerned. Awkward avoidances at worst, stiff pleasantries at best. Just as it had been before the Victory Tour.

Great.

In an effort to avoid the bitter thoughts circling his brain as long as possible, Peeta tried to busy himself with housework. But after he'd taken a scalding shower, stuffed his sheets into the washing machine, and needlessly wiped down all of his kitchen surfaces, Peeta found that he couldn't stand to spend another second in his house.

The glacial morning air caught in his chest and froze his still- damp hair almost instantly when he stepped onto his front porch. Katniss's footsteps were still stamped clearly into the crisp snow, and Peeta began tracing the same route, though he had no intention of actually going to find her. He knew a lost cause when he saw one.

"So you found a way to reverse that curse, I see?" The gruff voice called out to Peeta just as he was trudging past Haymitch's house. The old man himself was squatting on the top step of his porch with his familiar liquor bottle in hand.

Peeta threw him a reproachful look. "How'd you know?"

Haymitch shrugged. "Just a hunch. Plus, you carry yourself differently than Katniss does."

"Yeah, well we figured it out so… thanks."

Peeta made to slouch away and continue his walk to nowhere when Haymitch called back to him again. "Wanna come over for a drink?"

Wherever Peeta was headed, a visit with his alcohol- soaked mentor had certainly not been on the agenda. "It's nine in the morning, Haymitch." The man's eyebrows lifted toward his receding hairline as he raised the bottle in salute. Peeta rolled his eyes, his resolve deflating. "Fine."

"What, no baked goods for me today?" Haymitch goaded him once Peeta plopped down on the steps next to him.

"You invited me over here, remember? Besides I haven't had much opportunity for baking lately," Peeta said, remembering Katniss's dismal attempts at it, and trying not to remember the feeling of her body against his when he'd helped her in the kitchen.

Haymitch interrupted this thought process when he handed the bottle to Peeta, who eyed the liquid inside suspiciously. "Best to just swig it down. Don't even think about it," Haymitch advised. So Peeta took a generous chug of the liquor. The acrid heat of it burned all the way down his esophagus. He coughed and sputtered, tears gathering in his eyes. "Takes some getting used to," Haymitch said, grabbing the bottle and taking a generous swig for himself. "So- you wanna talk about it?"

"Not really." Despite the lingering sting in the back of his throat, Peeta reached for the bottle again. The alcohol was now giving off a pleasant warming effect as it coursed through his veins, not unlike the build- up to an orgasm. But thinking of orgasms brought him back to last night. To roving tongues and fingers. To the feeling of her inside him. Of him inside her. To the moment when they had come together… He shoved the thoughts out of his head before they could manifest themselves in his groin, taking another chug of the caustic liquor. It did seem to dull the onslaught of images that Peeta knew he would never be able to truly forget. It was easy to see why Haymitch had turned to this as a coping mechanism after his time in the arena.

"Good. Because I don't really want to hear about it."

They sat in companionable quiet as a fresh wave of snow flurries descended from the sky. They swirled in the light breeze that sent shivers running up Peeta's spine. He took more sips of the drink to keep himself warm. "Nothing ever goes well when the Capitol gets involved," Haymitch mumbled after a while, with a slow shake of his head. "I'm sorry it had to end up like this, anyway."

Though his senses were dulled, the words perked Peeta's ears. Haymitch's sentiment seemed oddly specific. It was almost as though… as though… "Haymitch, do you know what we had to do?" Peeta asked him, disconcerted.

"I… had my suspicions." There was a cryptic tone to his voice that Peeta didn't like.

"But- how?"

Haymitch leveled him with a sardonic look, which made him appear more sober in that moment than Peeta had ever seen him. "I've been around Capitol folks a long time, boy. Long enough to know that their motivations don't run all that deep. They're usually controlled out of desire for one of three things- money, power, or sex." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Figured this fortuneteller lady has a thirst for all three. It's easy enough to see where the first two factor in. I can't tell you whether or not she was paid to do it, but to lay claim to switching the star- crossed lovers- there's your fame and fortune right there. As for the birds and the bees… well, anyone with a little brainpower and little less naiveté than your darling sweetheart could have seen that one coming," Haymitch paused for a moment to snatch the bottle out of Peeta's limp grasp. He downed yet another shot before saying with a somewhat grudging hilarity, "And also… you should really close that bedroom window next time, kid."

Embarrassment flooded though Peeta and he knew there must be a spectacularly violent blush coloring his face. With it, all of his carefully suppressed anger rose to the surface. "What the hell, Haymitch? If you knew about this yesterday why didn't you tell us? You could have saved us a hell of a lot of trouble!" He had to restrain himself from driving his fist into the nearest snow bank out of the sheer desire to punch something.

Haymitch raised his eyebrows. "What, you're saying that if I told you the solution was as easy as fucking each other, you'd have listened to me? _She'd_ have listened? You think you would have skipped off to bed together the second I told you to do it? No. You and I both know it would have sent her bolting in the opposite direction. You needed to figure that shit out for yourselves, and look! Here you are!" Haymitch gestured wildly at Peeta, sloshing the drink out of the bottle as he did so. "I asked you over here because I thought you could probably use a drink after all that. Not so that you could berate me for not telling you something that you figured out on your own anyway."

For once Peeta lacked a sufficient retort, so he took a swing from the bottle again. Haymitch gave him an approving grunt. They sat in silence for a while longer, Peeta's liquor- clouded brain stewing over how fucked up everything had become. Just when he'd been on his way to breeching Katniss's tightly- guarded walls and becoming actual friends with her. After her escape this morning she was likely to avoid him for months. The thought was punctuated with the resurgence of memories from the previous night again, and this time he didn't push them away. He might as well relive them while they were still fresh in his mind, because it wasn't liable to happen again anytime soon. If ever.

Perhaps it was the alcohol, or the tide of fresh heartbreak rising up in him, or maybe it was the fact that he had no one else with whom to verbalize these things, but the private thought burst out of Peeta before he could stop it. "It's never gonna be real, is it? Me and her?"

Haymitch let the question hang in the air between them for a long time. So long that Peeta was starting to think the man didn't have it in him to give the answer that would crush his poor, lover boy heart for good. But finally, Haymitch spoke. "For what it's worth, I think it's more real than you think it is."

* * *

The only sound in the woods that morning was the crunch of her feet through the layer of fresh snow and dead leaves carpeting the forest floor. Katniss was ill- prepared for the hike, having left her hunting boots back at home, but she'd wound up here after fleeing Peeta's bedroom with only one thought in her head- _run_. His feelings would be shattered, she was sure, but she had to _breathe_. And there was only one place where that was possible anymore. The deep lungfuls of frigid winter air seized in her chest cavity and made her cough as she tried to catch her breath, but in a strange way it also helped to clear her head. Part of her wanted to dismiss what happened last night. Store it in a locked box at the back of her brain and throw away the proverbial key. But another- possibly stronger- part of her wanted to hold the memories close, to untangle and examine in small pieces until she could fully understand them.

As it was, there was a heavy ache between her legs that intensified with every step she took deeper into the woods, rendering it impossible to forget what happened only hours prior. She stopped to rest her back against the trunk of a particularly large tree, sinking down against it until her bottom hovered just above the ground. The motion tugged uncomfortably on the sore muscles of her nether regions, but the tenderness was not entirely unpleasant. In that regard, Peeta had kept his word. He'd made it good for her- she could not deny that. With somewhat mild amusement, Katniss realized that she shouldn't be surprised. When had he ever _not_ kept his word to her?

What should- and did- surprise her was the revelation that she wanted to do it again.

The sun was full in the sky when the cold finally became unbearable and Katniss stomped home, the thoughts in her head even more muddled than before her excursion into the woods. Prim was curled up on the couch with Buttercup when Katniss clambered through the front door and shrugged off her coat and shoes. "No game this morning?" The question startled Katniss, who looked down reflexively at her empty hands, and then at her sister's questioning eyes.

"Uh- no, nothing good this morning," she said, neglecting to meet Prim's gaze.

"Must be really dead out there right now," Prim commented, rising from her perch and picking up a sulky- looking Buttercup. "You didn't get anything with Gale yesterday, either."

Katniss only shrugged and cast around desperately for a change of subject. Their mother saved her the trouble when she called from the kitchen, "You're just in time for breakfast, Katniss!" Eternally grateful for her mother's timing, Katniss rushed into the kitchen and loaded a plate of sausage and eggs for herself. She plopped down at the table and began to eat without really tasting anything as her family joined her.

"This is good, Mom. I think it would be even better if we had some toast to go with it though," Prim said lightly, the fingers of one hand buried in Buttercup's fluffy head as she ate with the other. "We've missed that around here the past couple of weeks. Katniss, maybe you could ask Peeta..?"

"Not today, Prim." Katniss's tone was far too harsh, and the sound of it caused the cat to hiss at her and leap from Prim's arms to the ground, where he stalked out of the kitchen with his tail high in the air. Their mother's blond eyebrows were knit in confusion and Prim glanced between Katniss and the cat, clearly realizing that she'd said the wrong thing. "I'm sorry," Katniss backtracked, trying to cover the sticky moment. "I didn't mean to snap at you… It's just that I think Peeta's busy today, that's all. I'm sure he'll be back to baking soon."

But no baked good appeared on the Everdeen kitchen table in the days that followed. As assuredly as she was avoiding him, Katniss could only take this as a sign that Peeta was avoiding her as well. To make matters worse, her morning hunts were becoming as increasingly fruitless as they were dangerous. She found herself easily distracted by nothing more than the thoughts in her head and she missed most of her shots at the few critters she did happen to spot. It was not like her in the slightest, and Katniss was decidedly not fond of this version of herself. She could not help but feel as though she had a constant itch begging to be scratched and despite her best efforts, she was forced to the conclusion that hunting was not the remedy.

At last, the itch became unbearable. After a fitful night's sleep, Katniss had a sneaking suspicion as to what her problem might be. The morning's hunt had been pointless for the fourth day in a row now, and her bow lay forgotten beside her on the ground. The rock beneath her bottom was freezing cold, but at least it was dry and clear of snow and ice. It was the same ledge overlooking the valley where she used to meet Gale, but she had never been more grateful for his absence than she was now. Her sharp eyes scanned the area, the surrounding forest, and the valley below. Nothing but trees and rocks and snow. The only sound was the gentle melody of nature. And the only other person who frequented this place was in the middle of a twelve-hour shift a mile below the surface of the earth. Katniss was as alone as it was possible to be. So her hand crawled beneath the waistband of her pants, sinking into the hot flesh of her center, poking and prodding. Searching for that spot. The one that Peeta had found for her. The one that made her toes curl and stars burst behind her eyelids. Her fingers mapped the area for several minutes, slipping inside, swirling in the wetness gathered there. But nothing she did felt quite right. Her fingers were too cold, too small, too foreign. A frosty puff of air expelled from her mouth when she relented with a frustrated grunt, cursing under her breath. She remained on the ledge for a good while after that, until the cold seeping through her pants made its way to her bones. When she eventually forced her stiff muscles into a standing position, she had a plan.

Less than an hour later, Katniss was bustling around her kitchen, thankful to find that Prim was at school and a note from her mother detailing that she was making house calls in the Seam. The last thing Katniss felt like doing was explaining her sudden propensity for baking to either of them. Her kitchen was not nearly as well stocked for this as Peeta's, but the loaf of bread he'd taught her to make the other day had not required much in the way of ingredients. In fact, she managed to scrape together almost everything she needed, though she lamented the lack of cocoa powder.

After a couple of long, arduous hours in the kitchen, Katniss managed to come up with a halfway decent loaf of bread. It was not as symmetrical or as visually appealing as the one Peeta helped her bake, but it would have to do. She hoped he wasn't sick of honey wheat yet.

Before she lost her nerve, Katniss wrapped the piping hot bread in a clean dishtowel and headed over to Peeta's house, where she hesitated only a moment before knocking on his door. She thrust the wrapped loaf at Peeta when he answered, and shocked by her sudden appearance after several days worth of radio silence, he pulled the towel away and stared down at the bread without a word. His face was unreadable.

"I baked it," Katniss said, inwardly cursing herself for how stupid she sounded.

"Th-thank you," said Peeta, torn between confusion and amusement. "Would you like to come in, Katniss?" The words were kind, but formal. They stung at a very specific place in her chest, reminding her a little too much of their interactions prior to the Victory Tour. Before everything had changed between them. Katniss nodded anyway and stepped into the house behind him, though she remained standing stiffly in his foyer, unsure if she should remove her coat and shoes. It was odd- she'd been living in this house only days ago. Why did she feel like such a stranger here?

"It looks like you did a nice job," Peeta called from the kitchen. Katniss jumped and realized she was standing there alone, gazing at a blank spot on the wall while she lost herself in thought. It was an unfortunate habit she'd picked up over the last few days. Prim had called her out on it more than once. So she shrugged out of her coat and soggy shoes to join Peeta in the kitchen, where he was already slicing into the bread for them to share. She took the slice he offered to her and stuffed it in her mouth to avoid having to speak. It was slightly overdone and the flavor was not as rich as his was, but it was a marked improvement over her first attempt.

"It's good," Peeta said, inspecting his slice closely. "Did you manage this just from memory?"

"I don't want it to be weird between us again," Katniss blurted in response. Peeta stopped chewing at once, raising his eyebrows in mild surprise. He placed the remainder of his bread on the counter top as gingerly as if it were made of explosives.

Peeta finished chewing. Swallowed. "Neither do I." He paused, waiting for her to speak again. But she seemed to have exhausted her ability to express herself for the moment. "Look Katniss," he began with a heavy sigh, "I want you to know that the other night was… good. Really good. But it doesn't have to mean anything if you don't want it to. Just because we were put in that position- it doesn't mean it has to happen again. Or… that I _expect_ it to happen again. If I died now, I'd be happy."

His words hit her like a punch to the gut, though Katniss could not explain why. Peeta was saying all the right things. He clearly had some idea of the struggle running through her overwrought brain in the last few days- the fears, the anxiety, even the longing. He was trying to make it easier for her. He was being considerate and understanding and respectful of her space and her wishes.

And for some reason, it felt all wrong.

Sudden tears sprang to her eyes. To her immense disquiet, she found that she was powerless to stop them from rolling down her cheeks at an alarming pace. "Oh, Katniss-" Peeta leaned forward, uncertain as to whether he should touch her or not. After a hesitant beat, he settled for offering his outstretched arms. She fell into them gladly. "I don't know what's wrong," he whispered in her hair.

"Neither do I," she sniffled, not entirely truthful.

"It… it's because of the other night?" She nodded into his chest. Peeta sucked in a deep breath, bracing himself for the impeding massacre his heart was about to endure. "I'm sorry I'm that bad in bed," he chuckled, attempting to lighten the mood. "I'm sorry it had to happen like that. And I'm sorry you didn't like it."

She pulled her face out of his shirt to glare at him. "It's not that," she said, suddenly fierce. Peeta studied her face, his brows pulled together in puzzlement. He read the flush creeping up her neck and spreading to her cheeks; the way her body gave an involuntary jerk when his hand traced the skin of her arms. The increased breathing that told him if he laid his head on her chest he'd hear her heart beating a hysterical pattern against her ribcage.

The deepest inner workings of her mind might remain an enigma to him, but Peeta knew Katniss's body now. More intimately than anyone else in the world. He knew what it meant when she reacted to his touch. " _Did_ you like it?" he breathed. She kept her gaze trained on his chest. "Katniss." His finger titled her chin up so that her eyes locked to his. "It's okay if you did." His expression was full of pity and something else that was gentle but indefinable. "I- I more than liked it. For me, it was incredible. I-"

The expression on her face halted his rambling. Her eyes were hard; blazing into his so fiercely that it seemed unlikely she would ever look away. And yet there was softness there as well, a hint of the abashed bewilderment that was so endearingly Katniss. It was a look she'd given him only once before. Back in the arena, after the one kiss that haunted him more than any other. The one he was almost certain she had not faked. At the time it confused him, but he knew her so much better now. She wanted him- of that much he was convinced. He also knew that she was waiting for him to make the first move, to kiss her senseless and bring her to a trembling climax.

He wasn't going to do it.

Because there was only one decisive conclusion Peeta had been able to form in these past few days of solitude- he was done being the instigator. Almost every aspect of his relationship with Katniss was something that _he_ had initiated. Beginning with the star- crossed lover's fable that lead to the kisses and false words in the arena. When that blew up spectacularly in his face, it was he who had suggested the friendship to her. And the other night… he discovered the solution to their curse and convinced her into it.

But he was done pushing Katniss- however gently- to confront her feelings. And now… Peeta had no idea what he was to Katniss now. What she was to him. He suspected that it was more than friends. Perhaps not quite lovers. Either way, if she wanted him… he was right there. Willing to accept her in whatever capacity she needed. All she had to do was make the choice.

It took Katniss longer to come to this conclusion. In the time it took for realization to dawn, her eyes never left his. Locked in a battle of wills, each regarded the other with acute curiosity.

At long last, after the seconds stretched into what felt like several long hours, she leaned forward on her tiptoes to press her lips to his. The bread, the kitchen, the rest of the world disappeared as her focus narrowed down to this single point. Katniss sighed into the lips she'd been craving for days, relieved to find that Peeta accepted the kiss willingly, and with much enthusiasm. He wrapped a strong arm around her waist, as though to hold her there and never let go. The hunger lurking in the periphery of her subconscious burst forth as his lips and tongue coaxed the sensation into an inferno that consumed her body from head to toe.

It could have been minutes, hours, or even several sunlit days they remained in that spot, wrapped as tightly around one another as it was possible to be. Neither would know the difference.

"I want… to… try something," Katniss murmured between ragged breaths as Peeta's mouth descended to trace the uncharted skin of her neck and collarbone. He ignored her, choosing instead to nip at her earlobe before mapping the line of her jaw with his intoxicating tongue.

Before she could lose herself in his affections, Katniss gently dislodged herself from Peeta's grip, unbuttoning his pants and snaking her hand into his underwear in a single motion. Her fingers wrapped around his half- hard, aching cock. "Katniss-" Peeta groaned.

She dropped to her knees and silenced him with the glint of determination in her eyes. In an instant, his pants were around his ankles and her mouth was wrapped around him in a warm, luxurious vise. He was fully hard in seconds. Peeta forced himself to take several, calming breaths, or he knew this would be over before it even began. Katniss seemed ignorant of his struggle as she busied herself attempting to emulate the movements Peeta made when he'd done this for her. Minding her teeth while swirling her tongue around his tip. Pumping her hand up and down his shaft. It was something she wanted to do for him the instant he did it for her, and gauging by the quality of his grunts and moans, it felt just as good as she remembered. When she sucked in her cheeks, Peeta actually stumbled and gripped the countertop behind him for support.

"Oh, god- Katniss- I'm gonna-" He tried to pull out of her mouth, but she gave him an encouraging moan and grabbed his hips to keep him in place as his body gave spastic little jerks into her eager mouth. She gagged when he came, but kept her lips locked around him for every second of his shuddering climax. Peeta had never been so happy to inhabit his own body than when Katniss Everdeen was sucking him dry.

"Good?" she asked, a little too innocently from her position on the floor. She wiped her mouth as he pulled her back into a standing position. He pressed his forehead to hers.

"You would know," he grinned. And, _oh_ , did she know. In fact, she was surprised to find that she was the tiniest bit jealous. She was acutely aware that what she did for Peeta was something she could never experience again. As a result, the flesh between her thighs throbbed angrily with neglect. Impulsively, she grabbed Peeta's hand and guided it down her body. He caught onto her intentions at once and allowed her to slip his fingers into the waistband of her underwear. They found the spot for which she'd been searching earlier in a matter of seconds, and she almost collapsed against him right then and there.

Without dislodging his hand, Peeta caught her and scooped her up with his free arm, depositing her on the island in the center of the kitchen so that her profile rose above his. She grabbed the nape of his neck, coaxing his face upwards to meet her lips as his fingers continued their ruthless assault. When he stepped between her legs she widened them instinctively for him. The warm tingles of pleasure sparkled in her bloodstream and relaxed every inch of her body. _This_ was what she had been searching for whilst alone in the woods earlier. _This_ was heaven. It was over far too quickly when one of his thick fingers slipped inside her and twisted forward in a motion that took her breath away. She trembled around Peeta as the bliss washed over her limp body, such a blessed relief from the suppressed tension of the past few days. Unable to keep herself upright any longer, Katniss allowed her body to slump forward from her perch on the countertop. Peeta was there to catch her, holding her close and rubbing her back absentmindedly while she recovered.

"Thank you." His warm breath tickled her ear. "For coming back."

"I'm sorry I left in the first place," she admitted.

Peeta chuckled against her. "If you hadn't left, you wouldn't be _you_. And… if I'm being honest, I'm a little sorry we figured out the curse when we did. It wasn't so bad- being Katniss Everdeen."

"There were some benefits to being Peeta Mellark too," Katniss countered, a wry tone to her voice. Her traitorous eyes drifted to his groin.

Peeta followed her gaze and raised his eyebrows, amused. "That's true," he agreed. "But you know, I could use my mouth on you, too," he added as a casual afterthought. Katniss sat up at once, her face twisting into that bewildered look again.

"What do you mean?"

"Would you like me to show you?" His voice dripped with lust and her throat was far too dry to form words, so she nodded mutely. "Lay back," Peeta commanded. She obeyed, instantly forgetting the discomfort of the cold, hard surface beneath her when he tugged off her bottoms and ghosted his breath across the overly sensitive area between her legs. And when his tongue met her flesh, she ceased to remember anything at all.

* * *

Later that afternoon the sun hung low in the sky, casting a golden sheen of light through the bedroom. Katniss's head was heavy on the pillow as she dragged her eyes open. Judging by the quality of the light outside, she could not have been asleep very long. When she shifted under the covers, she discovered that her limbs felt like they were made of lead. She was almost certain they would not be able to move ever again. The waning light drew her attention Peeta next to her, picking up the golden strands in his hair and highlighting his pale lashes. For a moment she thought that he, too, had fallen asleep. Then his eyes flicked open and a grin split his face when he caught her watching him. "Hey," he said, his fingers toying with the end of her braid.

"Hey."

"I was just thinking… I never got that archery lesson." Peeta's eyes were twinkling mischievously under his mussed waves of blond hair.

She snorted and rolled her eyes, amazed that of all things, _this_ was what he chose to bring up at that moment. "And what makes you think I'm going to teach you?" she teased him, an indignant lilt to her voice.

"I taught you mine. You even made a passable loaf of bread all on your own. Not exactly how I would have done it but-" she smacked his shoulder playfully. "-you were a good student. Now you teach me yours. It's only fair."

Katniss studied him for a minute, searching his earnest blue eyes. Glanced out the window to check the level of sunlight left in the sky. If they hurried, they might have just enough time. For a short lesson at least. So Katniss groped around on the floor, to where his sweater landed in a crumpled heap. From when they'd stumbled up the stairs to the bedroom, shedding their clothing without a care where it landed. She tossed the sweater at him and Peeta caught it deftly. "Alright then," she said. "Let's go."

* * *

A/N: Huge apologies for the wait on this final chapter! My month has been crazy busy, but I am so happy to finally post the end to this story that has been on my mind for years. It has been a wonderful foray back into fan fic writing for me. Thank you so much to every person who has followed, favorited, and commented on this story- I appreciate it more than all of you will ever know! Please leave a review and let me know what you thought, and as always, I'm everlarkstoastbabies on tumblr. xoxo


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